


On the banks of a broken river

by TheArchaeologist



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't Have to Know Over The Garden Wall, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Flashbacks, Fluff, Gen, Good Uncle Number Five | The Boy, Hurt Number Five | The Boy, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Protective Number Five | The Boy, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Swearing, Uncle-Niece Relationship, to both canons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:56:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27546460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArchaeologist/pseuds/TheArchaeologist
Summary: It all started with an accidental jump.At least, Five thinks it did.Night drawing in and heavy rain lingering on the horizon, Five has little idea what he and Claire were doing before finding themselves lost in a dark, autumnal forest. There are no houses to be seen, no roads to follow, no signs or paths or hints of civilisation that could steer them in the right direction, just an endless sea of creaking trees and his niece, who seems to be enjoying their impromptu adventure.Five needs to get her home. However, escaping the woods and returning to his family might be a little harder than he initially thinks.
Relationships: Dolores & Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 183
Kudos: 213





	1. The Wood

When they were kids, they all had trouble controlling their powers.

As with any skill, it took time for them to understand what was happening, to narrow down the finer details of what made their abilities tick and clock up enough hours practicing for it to eventually become second nature. Countless days were lost to the training room, the four walls becoming such an aching familiar sight that even in the depths of the apocalypse, the ash tumbling around him and the dust whipping against his calves, Five could still recount every crack of paint on the wall and scuffmark against the solid wooden floors.

Sometimes he would spread out beside the fire and describe it all to Dolores, going over the history of all the scars they both gained and gave during those gruelling sessions. It felt unreal, a fevered dream just on the cusp of memory, a strange other life he could barely recall living in comparison to the continuous fire and death surrounding his entire existence.

Those nights, Five would tug his jacket sleeve up to his elbow, tracing dirty fingers and cracked nails over the circular branding of his umbrella tattoo, his only reminder, bar Vanya’s book, that he had, truly, once lived in a grandiose mansion, surrounded by people both weird and wonderful.

 _Tell me more,_ Dolores would say, whenever the memories became so deep Five thought he would drown, _What else did you do?_

In a funny turn of events, he and Luther spent a lot of time in that room together, making for a slightly odd pairing considering they usually butted heads. However, they were also the two most willing to let Dad push them to the edge, fighting through the limitations of their bodies until they were passed out on the floor, a puddle of bile over in the corner and eyes dizzy with black spots.

In fact, as testament to how fucked up their childhood was, they made a game of it, betting who would be the last to collapse and battling to see who was able to keep their lunch down the longest.

“What’s wrong, going to faint, Number One?”

“Not on your life, asshole!”

“Then you’ll have no trouble lifting this table, the chairs, and me all at once!”

“You’re on!”

Dad never made any attempt to put an end to their friendly little competition, and the winner, if they were conscious enough to claim it, got first dibs to the shower.

For the others, though, training was different.

Klaus and Ben did anything and everything to avoid interacting with their abilities, through any means necessary. Ben would pretend to be sick, and Klaus would get drunk. Ben would hide in one of the thousands of unused Academy rooms, and Klaus would get high. Ben would plead and sob and whimper to Mom and Pogo until they agreed to convince Reginald to call off his training for the day, and Klaus would just sneak out in the afternoon, not returning until the following morning, his hair a mess and clothes back-to-front.

Diego and Allison, meanwhile, mastered their powers pretty quickly. It was difficult for Diego to practice when his skill was to literally always hit his intended target, and once Allison knew to start a sentence with _“I heard a rumour…”_ she was fine.

However, for a certain amount of time, they struggled.

Luther would rip a door from its hinges simply trying to open it.

Ben would sneeze at breakfast and scare them half to death.

Klaus would chat to someone and not realise they were dead, especially when they left the realms of the Academy and the ghosts he grew to recognise.

Then, of course, there was Vanya.

Reginald Hargreaves was many things, a long list that Mom sometimes likes to spout off at random, but an understanding parent was not one of them.

It’s ironic that the old man put so much time and energy into preparing them to _save the world,_ only to be one of the direct causes of the literal apocalypse. It would almost be funny, if his sister didn’t end up deeply traumatised because of it.

Five didn’t get the Vanya treatment of being drugged up to his eyeballs, deemed less of a threat to Dad’s authority despite his very vocal outbursts, meaning he was forced to suffer the same delightful power-adjustment period as everyone else, all the inevitable hiccups included.

 _Power-puberty,_ as Klaus later dubbed it. 

While Luther broke, Ben frightened, and Klaus misunderstood, Five jumped.

He was young when it first started happening, young enough that he only has a few hazy images of tripping and landing in places that confused him, the rest lost to the annals of history and probably Dad’s security cameras. 

Since then, however, Five's grown, adapted, become an old hand at the art of self-teaching. He’s everything Dad wanted them to be and more, understanding his strengths and his weaknesses down to the final dot. Spatial jumps are muscle memory to him now, and having time travelled several times, including diving back to the past accompanied by a prayer circle of siblings in a crumbling theatre, Five can be fairly certain he understands the _hows_ and _whys_ to that pretty decently, as well.

Not enough to go on a historic sight-seeing joyride anytime soon, but he isn’t nearly as naive as his thirteen-year-old self, in any case.

Five knows his powers. He’s arguably the most experienced of them all, with a while lifetime of practive to back him up for this second run at living.

Which is why it’s fucking humiliating that he finds himself here, the result of a habit so old he sometimes can’t tell if he dreamed it up or not.

It’s been years since he jumped in his sleep.

Luckily for him, which tends to be rare in retrospect, as a kid he never went further than a room or two, perhaps down to the kitchen if he was particularly startled. Once, much to his horror, he ended up in Dad’s study, where they were threatened never to enter under pain of death.

Getting grounded for three weeks was the result of that misadventure, along with Dad’s special brand of personal bonding time.

Only twice did he ever go outside, and from that, it was only the once that he went further than their street. After so many years Five can no longer recall the nightmare that sparked him into it, however waking to find the wide-open area of the city park had been a shock hard to forget.

The car ride home was pretty memorable as well, with a silently fuming Dad at the wheel while Five sat in the back desperately trying not to make a noise and agitate the already furious man more. It had taken his Father nearly an hour to locate Five, and by the time he crawled into the car, his head ducked and eyes to the ground, his teeth were chattering from the winter wind.

After that, training became, maybe not worse, but different, stricter, with a higher emphasis on Five hitting whatever milestones and objectives Reginald set out that week.

Five, being the person that he is, relished in the opportunity to test the capabilities of his powers.

Eventually he grew out of it, and he hasn’t had a single accidental jumping incident in years, _decades_. Not when he was sent on dangerous missions far too young, not when his brain gained more fuel for the nightmarish fire while stuck in the apocalypse, and not when he became a bringer of death under the Commission’s rule.

Yet now, when everything is relatively peaceful, even verging on healthy?

Five’s old. It’s _embarrassing_. He should be passed stupid things like this.

But of course, here he is, dressed in the jeans Diego forced him into and the sweater Vanya gifted, trudging through the woods in search of a road. 

An experimental push at his powers had revealed absolutely nothing, not even the faintest hint of blue. That is, technically, a worse outcome than his trip to the apocalypse, considering that at least there he got some fudging of warped universe around his fists, trying and failing to shove himself back to the past.

Fucking _typical._

Five just wishes he wore sturdier shoes. The ones he shoved on this morning, once white things brought by Luther and unsubtly flung in his direction as he was coerced out of the Academy uniform, have the unfortunate flaw of _leaking,_ doing nothing to keep the puddle water and slippery mud that speaks of a previous torrential rain away from his chilled feet.

“ _When I sing, I dream, and when I dream my heart tells me-_ ”

“Claire.”

Breaking off from yet another rendition of a song they have all become far too familiar with the last week, Claire turns on her heel to face gim, grinning widely, her most recent missing tooth leaving a very noticeable gap in her bright, unwavering smile.

Five sighs, hunching a little tighter against the steady drizzle fuzzing the air.

The nightmare that caused him to jump was purged from his mind the moment he blinked and found himself standing among the trees, as was the memory of where he’d settled down to sleep to begin with. Much like someone his mental age, over the months following the apocalypse-that-wasn’t he has taken to short cat naps throughout the day, recharging in quiet corners of the mansion to compensate for a night filled with bouts of wakefulness and gory imagery.

Klaus teases him for it, but so far has been unable to find any of his hiding places. Allison was more successful, and commendably called him adorable to his face when he woke to find her hovering, stifling cooing chuckles behind her hand. _That_ stopped rapidly the moment Five stranded her entire wardrobe on the roof.

Claire obviously takes after her Mother and decided it would be a grand idea to join him during his doze.

Leading them here.

“Uncle Five, are you okay?” Claire asks, the picture of utter innocence, as if she and Diego didn’t spend a whole evening booby-trapping the house when it was his turn to babysit. The bottoms of her pink jeans are splashed with slowly solidifying mud, a parting gift from the puddle she insisted on walking through even when Five warned against it.

She’s far too much like Allison at times. It’s scary.

“I’m fine, but it might be a good idea to give that song a break.” He says, tucking his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. How Claire is running around with her zip-up jacket undone he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s just to show off her unicorn top. “You’ll wear your voice out, and run the risk becoming as annoying as your Uncle Klaus.”

Sticking her tongue out at him, ever the cheeky scamp, Claire giggles and falls into step at his side, humming lightly under her breath. 

Five watches her out of the corner of his vision, the images of Allison at this age, her hands on her hips and scowling when their brothers played some prank or beat her in training, flashing to the forefront of his mind. She’s a little shorter than Allison , their sister was always frustratingly tall, however Five doesn’t find himself minding too much, considering it puts his niece second only to Vanya for people he doesn’t have to strain his neck to look in the eye.

Despite the fading light, he can easily make out the faint line of dew-like water beginning to coat her curled hair, a gift bestowed by the overall damp and gloomy weather.

She has a fully functioning hood, why she refuses to use it is beyond him.

 _You should do something about that,_ Dolores comments, _Or she’ll get a cold._

Claire suddenly pipes up, “I wouldn’t mind being like Uncle Klaus. He’s my favourite.”

“He is?” Raising an eyebrow at her, Five tilts his head. “Were you bribed into such statements, or…”

“Nah-uh, everyone else just gets put down at the bottom by proxy.”

“Proxy to what?”

Claire stares at him like it’s obvious. “Proxy that Uncle Klaus plays fashion show with me, and you don’t.”

“I don’t think you understand what proxy means, Claire.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Well, Uncle Klaus let met paint his nails, and you don’t, so that means he’s my favourite.”

“Didn’t you paint Luther’s yesterday?”

“Yeah, but he didn’t let it dry properly and smudged it everywhere. Uncle Klaus _never_ does that.”

Uncle Klaus _most definitely_ does that, usually on Five’s things, or worse, the furniture where even Mom and all of her expert skills can’t get it out.

“ _And,_ ” Claire presses, “He lets me play Red Carpet with him. You _never_ want to play that with me.”

A truth Five will openly admit. Whenever he’s on ‘watch the kid’ duty, something that gets his brothers as flustered as trying to keep track of a slippery bar of soap, he’s a fan of such games as ‘Let’s See Who Can Go To Sleep First’, and ‘Green Beans Are Actually Okay And You’re Just Picky’.

He grew up in a household where killing the average shoplifter was normal and an apocalyptic hell surrounded by corpses. It’s amazing what that kind of thing does to a person.

“Last time me and Uncle Klaus played it together, he went into Grandma’s room and found all her high heels. I don’t get how Mom can walk in those. They make my feet hurt.” She glances down at her once purple sneakers, now caked in dirt, as if they will magically turn into a pair of heels, before continuing at her normal hundred miles an hour. “Mom says she just got used to it, and Uncle Klaus said it’s a by-product of a toxic industry, but I think he only said that because he likes this sequin pair Mom has and she won’t let him have them. Oh!”

Five startles as she leaps directly in front of him, nearly causing a collision. He murmurs a low, “Careful.”

A bracelet gets shoved in his face. “Mom got me this, have you seen it? It’s really shiny and if the sun’s out and I hold it up then all the pink bits get _really_ sparkly! Uncle Klaus said he wished he had one as well, and Mom told him to get a job.”

The item in question is a small silver band that sits well on Claire’s wrist, completed with six fake gemstones probably made of resin and enough pink glitter to make one of those fairy dolls in the toyshops blush. Five can remember Allison buying it, having been personally dragged off halfway through a collective _Let’s Decorate the House_ family shopping trip to visit a small market stall where they were being sold for stupid amounts.

“Oh, she’d love this.” His sister had whispered, holding it against the light. “She’s all about glitter and pink.”

“As I imagine most young girls are.” He’d commented.

“Tell that to Vanya.”

“Hence my _most_.”

Carefully, Five pushes the bracelet away from the end of his nose, taking a step back. “It’s very nice.”

“I know! I’m going to show Dad when I get home and put it in my jewellery box. Soon I’ll have as much as Mom!”

“Which I’m certain Uncle Klaus would love to see.”

Claire beams at the idea, and then spins to skip about between the trees, Five trailing along behind and ignoring the song she starts whispering to herself.

For all his niece seems no worse for wear after their unexpected trip into the middle of nowhere, Five knows that it’s going to be a shitstorm back at home. Undoubtedly Allison has noticed her daughter missing, and with the light falling thick and fast, it’s only going to be a matter of time before the typical Hargreeve Panic sets in. All he can do is hope that they also note his absence as well, and realise they are together, and that Claire is therefore safe.

Pulling his sleeves down over his hands, Five eyes the way Claire dances around ahead of him, confident despite the risk of tripping over or skidding in the mud.

She’s no longer of an age where the smallest bumps and bruises warrant a meltdown, Five wasn’t there for her early years, however a thunk to the head from an untimely placed branch or a slide into a ditch would still result in tears, and Five isn’t coward enough to admit that kind of thing is far out of his depth.

He needs to get them home, before things take a turn.

 _You’ll be fine,_ Dolores chimes, _It’s only Claire, it’s not like she’s a stranger._

Five grumbles under his breath, hunching his shoulders tighter.

The breeze is damp and cold around them, picking up faint droplets from branches and amber leaves and tickling them against his exposed face. Autumn seems to be early this year, or perhaps he jumped further than expected, and they are more northerly than he realises. They have yet to find a single signpost to point them back towards civilisation, so Five has no idea.

All he can do is pray that they find a phone before the next bout of rain. If he delivers Claire back to Allison soaked through and freezing, he sure as hell isn’t going to be in any of her good books for a while, and unlike Klaus or Luther, Allison isn’t made lenient by bribery.

Somewhere, off in the distance, there’s a noise, faint and hard to hear as the wind whistles through the branches and makes the bark creak. Claire’s humming joins it, and Five pauses to strain over the sounds, listening carefully.

Splashes of water, fast flowing but not necessarily powerful, catching against rocks or a riverbank.

There were times in the apocalypse, mercifully few and far between but still just as terrifying, when Five would get lost.

Although he did everything he could to ensure it didn’t happen, there were moments when his maps didn’t correlate with the landscape around him, or when the weather turned so bad that Five was forced into areas further than his expedition missions exploring the towns around the city. On one occasion, fires on the horizon, so dense that the smoke suffocated the air, forced Five all the way to the coast, where he ended up taking refuge on the beach to wait out the intense heat.

Something he learned quickly from those misadventures was that rivers, or for him in the dried husk of the world, empty riverbeds, eventually went towards people and the charred remains of their homes.

With this in mind, Five calls to Claire, takes her hand in his own, and steers them off their current path towards the bubbling water.

The trees, looming like silent sentries, listen as his niece begins to sing again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone else: *Crosses tua over with Marvel or something*
> 
> Me: ...
> 
> Me: ...
> 
> Me: Anyway how about a kid's cartoon from 2014?
> 
> [Tumblr](https://ancientstone.tumblr.com/)


	2. The Bridge by the Inn

_“When I sing, I dream, and when I dream my heart tells me the path I must choose!”_

Five, much like his other siblings, had a fairly sheltered childhood, and any media that didn’t cover mountaineering, surviving chemical fires, or lecture indifferently on how to gouge another child’s eyes out were strictly controlled within the Hargreeve household. The odd bits of fiction that did meet their Father’s standards tended to lean into horrendously dull territory, the classics, the originals, the first tales scribbled down on papyrus scrolls, stuff which, Five will admit, has actually become more interesting as he’s grown older, however to a class under tens forced to sit through Pogo’s lessons, felt like a long slog through never-ending sentences and bizarre, clunky dialogue.

There was certainly no room for animated, lyrical fairy-tales.

_“The path…I must…Choose!”_

“Give me strength.” He mutters, rubbing at his temples. Blissfully unaware to his steadily mounting headache, Claire continues her delighted mantra for the seventh time in as many minutes.

It’s a pity to eardrums everywhere that he was never given a job involving a certain animation studio founder, especially if _this_ is the height of their musical talents.

 _Patience,_ Dolores hums, though he can hear the smirk in her voice.

This is nothing like the apocalypse.

Minus the first few days where he was a shivering wreck, Five was never in the situation he is now, dressed in poorly suited clothes with no supplies or backup plan. Always, _always,_ there was something tucked up his sleeve, a Plan B or C or D to help him get through whatever popped up in his face, with escape routes for those as well.

After a while Dolores started to call it paranoia, but Five called it practicality. In a world where the only person he could rely upon was himself, it paid to be extra vigilant, to stock up on more than he needed, because tomorrow something might happen, and all those stocks may become vital to surviving the isolated hell around him.

It was bad enough when it was just him, lost and alone and unprepared, a child of thirteen about to stumble across his siblings’ motionless bodies.

Now, though, he has _Claire_ with him, and while an obviously thriving forest is nothing like the world of ash and heat that he once knew, it still, somehow, strikes just as harsh against his chest.

Further up the path, Claire tugs a twig out from a bush and begins swinging it around, a sword, perhaps, or a wand.

He waited so long to meet his niece.

It was only a handful years into the apocalypse when he discovered her existence, thanks to a half-crumbled office block which produced a back-catalogue of gossip magazines. It must have been some kind of publishing company, the collection spanning through the late 2000s and 2010s.

Five used it as kindling. Page after page after page were lost to the hungry flames, agony aunt columns and star aliment charts alike. He didn’t offer them much mind, barely glancing at what he was doing right up to the moment his sister’s face smiled back at him, accompanied by a man with light stubble and a grinning, excited little girl.

He didn’t sleep much, that night, nor the thirty-something years’ worth of nights after that. There was no little girl with Allison where he found her, but he didn’t think it far-fetched to imagine his sister would have Claire and her husband staying somewhere nearby in the city while she attended Dad’s funeral. 

Five spent months flinching at every small body he came across, suddenly terrified that he would spot another familiar face staring blankly back at him, another relation he failed to save and allowed to die.

He can only assume with hindsight that the magazines he’d already tossed to the fire were the ones detailing his sister’s divorce, and the ex who gained custody of her child.

It wouldn’t be until he was in his thirties that Five found this out, thanks to another tabloid paper buried under the rubble.

He drank a lot, that evening.

Now, Claire’s pink hoodie stands out bright against the darkened shadows pulling in around them, a stark, cheerful contrast on what is otherwise a pretty dim and dismal day, soon to be night.

They came across the footpath not long after he clocked the sound of running water, the river splashing murky and churned alongside it. Lapping against the banks, it swells higher than Five suspects is normal, soaking in all the runoff from the recent rain and bubbling merrily with the extra load. Leaves sweep along like little boats, scattering and jumping about as they float and acting as ominous shadows beneath the surface when they ultimately become waterlogged and sink.

The sun is all but gone, hidden behind heavy clouds, and a deep chill now lingers in the air.

It never pays to get caught out in the rain, especially when so poorly prepared for it. Their best bet is to find a diner or gas station and make use of their phone to call the Academy. Klaus, Ben, and Luther are all still living there, and even if none of them answer, Mom always will. 

Best case scenario, someone will come and pick them up, and Five will have endure an earful all the way home for getting Claire lost.

Worst case scenario, they spend the night out in the woods, and pray those clouds drift away and don’t sob all over them. If they jumped further than expected, then it might not be until tomorrow that someone arrives to collect them.

The wind continues to gently whistle, the steady drizzle numbs the tips of his ears, and off in the distance a squirrel races up a tree.

Five didn’t survive an entire apocalypse to end up somewhere so fucking _bleak._

“On guard!” Claire yells loudly, spinning to shove the end of her stick against his chest. She holds out her other hand as if a professional fencer, only instead of having her palm upwards, it faces down instead.

“Well, you sure got me.” Five says without flinching. “Your Uncle Diego must have been giving you stabbing lessons. Also, it’s _en garde_.”

She scowls. “Dead people can’t talk.”

“Hm, really? Are you sure?” Five strolls passed her, ambling along at a leisurely pace, listening for her scurrying feet. “Because I’m certain I still am, though I’ve clearly met my end.”

Behind him, Claire huffs, tossing her stick into the water with a plop and letting the pretence fall away. She hurries after him, and then pulls ahead again, making a new, less enthusiastic amusement out of shadowing her discarded foil as it bobs along the current.

Five feels his smirk drop.

At the start of the week, the first of three they have planned to spend at the Academy and almost the entire duration of his sister’s granted stint of visitation, Allison had cornered him in the kitchen, her arms crossed tightly and that infuriating concerned furrow in her brows, the one she likes to use when they feel the need to stage _interventions_ and _serious family talks._

“I know you haven’t got any real experience with children.” She’d said, her voice a little croaky after reading Claire’s bedtime story. “I know you’re trying, but you’re too blunt with her at times, Five. You need to go along with her games. Who knows? You might even find it fun.”

“I’m fifty-eight, soon to be fifty-nine.” Five replied over the rim of his coffee mug, eyeing her over. “I grew up in a home where _fun and games_ were restricted to noon and half-past noon one day a week, and then spent the rest of my time surviving and murdering. Excuse me if I’m a little _rusty_.”

Dolores scolded him for that comeback when he told her about it later on, wholeheartedly agreeing with Allison.

“Traitor.” Five had huffed.

 _I’m the best thing to happen to you, and you know it,_ Dolores replied, her head in the air and eyes twinkling.

Dolores would be far better with Claire than him. 

At times, her soft voice is the only thing able to cut through the noise in his head, pulling him out of equations and logistics and reminding him to eat, sleep, and breathe. Five likes to think himself as a pretty level-headed individual, but Dolores is as well, in a strangely different yet desperately needed way. Where he is stark, she is gentle, and unlike Diego, Five will admit his own shortcomings willingly.

Further up, the path and the river both curve off to one side, bending sharply to the right, and as Claire disappears around the corner Five finds himself sighing, calling out, “Stay where I can see you.”

She pops back into view, exclaiming excitedly, “Uncle Five! Come look! It’s a house!”

It is not, in fact, a house, but rather an hotel of some kind named _The Bridge Inn,_ going by the careful black lettering nailed to the front of the brickwork. The windows glow with amber light, and a chimney pumps out a steady plume of smoke that vanishes into the increasingly black clouds overhead. A rickety barn, a small thing probably only designed for the odd hay bale and a few sad old farm tools, stands slightly slumped closer to the treeline, a sorry sight of aging timber swiftly reaching the end of its life.

The path they currently stand on goes right alongside it, continuing off downstream while a wider road cuts across the front, coming from deep within the woods and bending over a wooden bridge beside the inn before heading onwards, over the hill and away.

A signpost with four pointing branches stands worn and tinged green at the crossroads.

“Come on.” He nudges Claire forward, trying not to sniff as the cold begins to nip at the end of his nose. “Let’s go see where we are.”

Claire beats him too it, but quickly glares at its unhelpful guidance, turning to Five. “Who paints white words on a white background? You can’t read it!”

“Idiots.” Five shrugs, squinting up at the wood in the last lingering echoes of dusk.

It’s hard to tell, but apparently the way they just came leads to somewhere called Oak’s Place, though Five didn’t see any oaks on their way down. If they ignored the building, they would come to a watermill. Going left over the bridge would be a mystery, as the word is obscured by the moss growing over the lettering, and heading off to the right takes them to what is only described as The Ruins.

None of which will be particularly useful for giving his siblings directions.

Because of course it isn’t.

What in Five’s life isn’t one big faff?

Running a hand through his hair, one of his many bad habits he picked up in the apocalypse, Dolores always scolded him when he tugged particularly hard at his scalp, Five’s face twists into a grimace, and he glares at the thin coating of fine rain that wets his palm, wiping it off on the leg of his jeans with a huff. A quick glance at Claire, who is already scampering off to peer into one of the inn’s windows, reveals that in the last half an hour she’s ended up no better, the soggy patches of mud clinging to her legs now large, damp splotches.

They need warmth, and towels, and hot baths they can soak in if they are to have any hope in hell of keeping the inevitable colds they are going to suffer after this somewhat at bay.

He joins Claire, nodding in the direction of the door. “Time for us to borrow a phone.”

The chiming of a bell greets them as they push their way inside, a wave of heat hitting Five in the face like a blast of Vanya’s power, his cheeks tingling from the impact to the point of near pain. The hinges protest their entrance, and shrill terribly as he shoves the door shut behind them, a black metal latch slotting into place with a clatter.

“Uncle Five, look at this!”

Dashing across the room in a blur of pink, Claire hurries over to the large brick fireplace, the flames crackling brightly, and squats down in front of it, holding out her hands. Now he’s not having to peer through the dark he can see just how wet her clothes have become, and her fingers are shaking a little, shivering from their long exposure to the outside elements.

“One moment!” A muffled woman’s voice yells out, and Five sniffs, shuffling over to Claire.

“Don’t get too close.” He tells her.

The blaze of the fire sinks into his skin as he kneels, seeping through to his bones and chasing away the uncomfortable cold settled within them. His clothes are going to take a while to dry, if experience has taught Five anything, but he can at least get a bit of heat into them for a moment.

Claire ignores his comment, saying instead, “This is so much bigger than the one you have at the Academy!”

“The building is probably older. In the past, all houses needed fireplaces. This one’s probably the original.”

Glancing around, Five studies the timber beams overhead and the way the soot from the fire seems to have settled every crack and scar it can find. This must be the reception area, completed with a square cut hole in the wall for the front desk and a set of badly lit stairs heading up to the bedrooms.

The wall surrounding the office window is littered with pieces of paper which have been nailed up with far too much vigour, ranging from bits of scrap, torn off corners with swirly cursive, and reused notes with spidery handwriting, tosome better presented notices, including one which catches Five’s attention.

It’s titled _The Rules_ and runs the entire height of the wall and then some, the end trailing awkwardly onto the ground where it’s become marred with dirt and dust. 

Something tumbles to the floor in the office, and the voice curses.

“Why don’t they get a new one then?” Claire asks, drawing Five’s attention back to her.

“To pull the fireplace out for a more modern version would ruin the aesthetic, and people love a novelty. This is probably a themed hotel.”

Leaning away from the flames for a moment, Claire peers up at him. “It’s themed old timey? Like the museum we have to visit every year at school?”

“I imagine. That or they’re Puritans.”

“Does that mean there’s no TV?” Claire eyes widen comically.

Five snorts. “Unlikely not.”

Utter distaste crosses Claire’s face, and she mutters something below her breath which is more than likely one of the _don’t-tell-your-Mom_ words she picked up from Diego, who then panicked and swore her to secrecy.

Unfortunately for his brother, Claire’s idea who should and shouldn’t be privileged to her secrets is very different to his own.

If Allison were here, she would certainly throw a fit, however she isn’t, and considering Five has been granted the role of Aloof but Mostly Okay uncle, he lets it slide without comment.

 _Five,_ Dolores tuts in the back of his mind, _Seriously?_

Rolling his eyes, Five gently presses his fingers against Claire’s cheek, testing their temperature. They aren't icy cold, but they are chilled nonetheless, even when Claire shuffles away from his reach and inches another step closer to the fire.

“We’ll dry off soon, alright?" Letting his arm drop, Five scrutinises his niece. "Maybe we can ask for a change of clothes until the morning.”

Annoyingly, there isn’t a clock, but judging by the oncoming night it must be getting late. There’s no obvious phone either, though normally receptionists have one at their side ready to take bookings, so he’ll probably have to use that to ring his siblings.

“No kids allowed.”

They both startle, Claire squeaking and Five twisting towards the office to find a woman now standing at her wall window, her hair tightly pinned back and face pinched. Claire clambers to her feet the same time he does, pressing close against him.

Five stares.

The woman glares skyward in a look for divine intervention, muttering under her breath.

“No kids allowed.” She repeats, leaning forward and tapping _The Rules_. “No dogs, no cats, no pigs or rats or mice, no chickens or horses or any beast of the four-legged variety, and absolutely _no kids_. Fish are an exception. You got a fish? I can provide a bowl.”

There is nothing in his mouth to swallow, but Five does it anyway, gulping thickly and failing to dislodge the wedge in his throat.

His eyes very slowly trail down the woman’s clothes.

She’s wearing a brown dress, simple and practical, with an apron secured tight around her middle. It has pockets, inside which something bulges, with a few faded stains dotted here and there, and spread across her shoulders is a lace shawl, intricate in its design and of a far better quality than the rest of her outfit. A line of soot has been accidentally rubbed over the bridge of her nose.

Not a single thing about her outfit is from this century.

Klaus wouldn’t be caught dead in half that gear, and that says a lot.

Like a blind man granted vision, Five drags his gaze back to the rest of the room, feeling owlish in his goggling. 

He’d been too preoccupied with getting Claire warm again to notice, but now he’s taking a moment, stepping back and glancing around, the lack of electric lighting is blaringly obvious. Nothing in this room runs on more than wood or coal, and as the wind rattles along, the door creaks in its frame, the latch chattering. The lock on it, Five suddenly realises, is old, the type of thing which requires a large, worn key.

Even the windows are wrong, the panes thin and easily breakable, the kind which shiver in the smallest of breezes. Five became aching familiar with those, whenever he had to overnight on the bleak era jobs during his stint at the Commission, he lost many nights to them.

The real kicker is that there’s no fire alarm, because even the most historic of houses still have to adhere to modern fire regulations.

“Are you a Puritan?” Claire pipes up, openly scrutinising the woman’s attire. “Or…Or someone pretending to be from history? Um, Dad said they were called reactors? Reactions?”

“Reenactor.” Five supplies numbly. His stomach churns, not quite yet a banshee storm of nausea, however gradually whipping into something chaotic and unsteady.

The woman is unimpressed. “A what?” 

“A _reenactor_.” Claire says slowly. “Someone who dresses up and pretends-”

The woman makes a ‘tsk’ noise and taps _The Rules_ again. “No jokesters, either. Not in my inn. I don’t got the time nor the patience.”

“I…I see.” Five’s fingers curl into fists, his nails digging into his palms, _hard_. The woman isn’t a single bit cowed by whatever intense expression he directs at her whenhe asks, “What year is it?”

She rests her hands on her hips. “Are you gonna spend all night asking wild questions, or are you gonna leave me to my evening?”

“Please,” Five insists, his tongue not feeling his own, his lips moving without him, “When are we?”

“I don’t rightly know. There’s no sense trying to keep tabs at those kinda things.”

“I…”

“Uncle Five?”

Growing up, Five sometimes spatial jumped in his sleep.

Never, in the history of his long and complicated lifetime, did he ever _time travel._

A whole hysteria of noise instantly barrages its way into his skull, loud like baying dogs on the scent of some poor creature and ready to run it to exhaustion. Equations swell, along with every possibly question on how to get back, _(forward, forward, forward)_ , how to survive, how to properly explain to a kid what he has just done to her, what he has just done to her _life._

Because last time he jumped there was ash and smoke and death, there was forty-five years spent alone, rusting in a rotting world, there was loneliness, and pain, and a sanity he is no fool to believe he didn’t lose.

There was his family, dead, their corpses waiting for his small hands to bury.

Dolores is shouting at him.

The past is dangerous, fucking _deadly,_ the likelihood of starving or succumbing to illness, disease, even petty thieves with sharp knives, is unbelievably high. There are risks Claire will have never heard of, threats she will have no worldly knowledge against, she is the equivalent of tossing a puppy out onto the street and expecting it to last longer than a day.

Distantly, he’s aware of Claire’s fingers curling around his own, tugging in a bid to catch his attention.

Time travel is different to spatial jumps. Time travel is hard, and exhausting, and leaves Five sagging on his feet and in need of food and rest. It can’t be done without knowing, the same way Ben can’t summon The Horror without realising. He shouldn’t be able to zip through time and remain ignorant, not without an indication of what he’s done.

Yet here he is, gawking at the fact that he’s taken a vacation to who knows when, once again skipping out on his family without so much as a goodbye.

With Claire. He’s time travelled, with _Claire._

Five just opened his eyes and found himself in the woods. 

Why can’t he remember jumping in the first place?

“I have no money…” His mouth stutters before his brain can fully catch up, the dawning implications and complications of what this mess truly means rushing in. 

With the Commission, Five was always prepped. He was given clothes, things to fit in, the means to make purchases and transactions so he could fully integrate himself as a member of that society.

Now, Five’s dressed in jeans, a sweater, and a soggy pair of sneakers. He has no cash, no identity, nothing that could get him, _them,_ in a position to be safe and comfortable for however long it takes to put this right.

“Then why’d bother to come in?” The woman snaps.

“I…Uh, I…”

“Uncle Five?”

This is too much to handle, too much at once. Five thought he was beyond this, that his years bouncing around the timeline were over and done. He was moving on, they all were, learning to navigate a world where Reginald Hargreeves is dead, and Vanya is miles more than ordinary.

It took so much, to finally kill that switch in his brain urging him to stay in survival mode, to be wary and cautious and on high alert twenty-four-seven.

Five feels it quietly flick back on again.

“I’m sorry.” His breath hitching, Five practically leaps for the door, dragging Claire behind him. “Excuse us.”

“Uncle Five!” Claire struggles as he heaves them out into the cold, yanking on his arm hard enough to bring them to a stop, the door swinging shut loudly behind them. “Uncle Five, wait-”

“Not now, Claire, let me think-”

“No!” A stubborn as her mother, Claire breaks free and stands firm. “I don’t understand, what’s-”

“ _Fuck, fuck, fuck_ …” Turning on his heel, Five paces away from his niece, his hands finding his hair as he squeezes his eyes shut. “Of all the fucking stupid-”

_Breathe, Five._

Claire isn’t like him. 

She wasn’t brought up in a household of superpowered idiots, she wasn’t trained to be a small solider capable of killing grown men with nothing but a thumbtack and piece of string. She wasn’t prepared for all the atrocities life has to offer, all the dark and seedy things mankind is capable of, and she most definitely has no idea what kind of hardships they are about to face, whether they like it or not.

She’s a child, younger than even Five was when he first vanished into thin air, and now she might spend weeks, months, decades stranded in centuries past where the people are rough and their mindsets worse. Humans are bastards, in more way than one, and there’s nothing Five can say to mentally prepare her for the sheer amount of fuckery he’s just caused them.

His niece deserves movie marathons, playing fashion show with Klaus, and a hideous amount of spoiling from Allison, not this, never this. There are few people in the world Five would ever wish this upon.

 _Oh goodness,_ Dolores says forlornly, _Allison._

Their family won’t have a clue what happened. They will think he and Claire were kidnapped, or taken, or killed. None of them, not for a split second, would imagine that Five time travelled again, let alone with his _niece._ Why would they? It was clear Five learned his lesson the first time around.

If Claire returns to the modern day a grown woman, Allison will never forgive him, and that’s even _if_ he figures it out.

He never did, in the apocalypse, the Commission had to rescue him.

Small arms loop around his waist, and Five blinks down at Claire curling against him, squeezing him in a hug.

“I’m sorry.” She whispers.

Five's brain stutters, his hands dropping to her shoulders. “What? Why?”

“You’re angry. I didn’t mean to yell-”

“Oh, no, Claire,” Quickly falling to his knee, not caring for the mud, Five fixes her with a firm look. “I’m not angry with you, alright? I’m not. I’m mad at me, I’m the one’s who’s messed up.”

“Because you jumped funny?”

He swallows thickly. “Yeah. Yeah, because I jumped funny.”

“Oh. That’s okay. I forgive you.”

“I’m going to figure this out.” Five promises with every ounce of meaning in his body, tightening his hold. “I swear, Claire, I’ll get you home.”

“Okay, but can we go back inside now?”

“Um…” Glancing towards the inn, Five pauses, watching the figure of the woman moving around, tending to the fire.

They won’t be allowed back in, that’s for certain, and with his powers currently out of whack he can’t just whip them up to one of the bedrooms anyway and camp out for the night. Standing, Five keeps his hand on Claire, feeling the way the drizzle clings to her and seeps deeply into her clothes.

Spending the night outside is an absolute no-can-do, as Klaus would put it, but the inn is the only shelter for potentially miles, and Five can’t set off in the near-dark down the path not knowing if they will find another place to stay.

His eyes settle on the barn.

“We’re…” He trails off, working it out in his head, before nodding. “We’re going to do something a little different.”

Claire squints at him. “Different?”

“Uh-huh, yeah, um, we’re going to camp.”

“But it’s raining.” Scrunching her nose, Claire glances around. “And wet. And cold.”

Five nudges them into walking, aiming for the, hopefully unlocked, barn doors. “Exactly, which is why we’re going to camp in here.”

“But isn’t camping when you have a tent outside and-”

“Fine, forget camping, let’s go be squatters. We’ll do an Uncle Klaus.” 

“I don’t get it.” Claire murmurs softly.

The doors are stiff and the hinges squeal, however after a moment of pushing and shoving, resulting in Claire quiet comment of, “It’s a pull door, Uncle Five”, they stumble inside, revealing a crooked but dry room that, despite outside appearances, seems to be sturdy enough to be deemed safe, at least for the night.

Instantly curious, Claire sets out investigating everything that catches her wandering attention, curiously stomping on the old bits of straw and hay left to fester on the earth floor, and then going to investigate an wooden plough shoved in the corner and partially hidden by a dusty sheet.

“Mind for sharp bits.” Five calls across, carefully clearing an area in the middle of the room.

“I will. What is it?”

“It’s a plough.”

“The things on the back of tractors?”

Against one of the walls is a stack of chopped wood, obviously intended for the large brick fireplace of the inn. Five helps himself, plucking out the smaller kindling before grabbing a few bigger logs.

“Yes, but an earlier version. Before tractors, horses used to have to pull the plough along.”

Claire’s face drops. “That’s cruel!”

“Not really.”

“Didn’t they get tired?”

“I imagine so.” Kindling readily prepared, Five starts working to build a flame. “But back in those days people relied on their horses for everything, so they probably took good care of them.”

Footsteps shuffle in his direction as he leans down to blow air into the small, fragile embers beginning to emerge, breathing life into them as they steadily begin to grow in size. Sitting back on his knees, he reaches over and tugs Claire away from it, his niece thankfully obeying and dropping into a squat out of harm’s reach. Her brown eyes peer through the gloom at the gradually bleeding light starting to trickle from one piece of wood to another.

“How did you build a fire?”

“Years of experience.” Sighing tiredly, running a hand over his face, Five glances at her. “You remember how I was gone for a really long time, don’t you? Your Mother explained it all?”

Claire nods. “Uh-huh.”

“Well, where I went, I had to rely on myself a lot, and each morning the first thing I did was make a fire.”

“That’s so cool.” She tells him seriously. “You had to do that _every_ morning?”

“Yes.” An exhausted, but unforced grin finds its way onto Five’s face, and he adds, “I bet your Uncle Klaus can’t do _that_.”

Claire giggles, tipping backwards and sitting properly, crossing her legs. The fire builds before them, and Five feeds it one of the larger logs.

“Uncle Klaus is still my favourite.” She clarifies after a moment of deliberation. “But I think being able to make a fire is better than being able to paint nails properly. I don’t think even Uncle Diego knows how to do that. The fire, I mean.”

His brother absolutely does, considering they were all put through the same wilderness training, but like shit is he going to mention it. Anyway, Five can guarantee that he can light his fires the fastest out of all of them, after getting decades of experience under his belt.

The familiar curl of Hargreeve competitiveness flickers in his chest, and Five latches onto it with both hands, the distraction needed more than anything else right now.

“If I teach you how to make a fire, will my ranking go up?”

 _Five!_ Dolores squawks. _No!_

However, Claire is nodding eagerly, sitting up straight and watching with attentive eyes, and really, what choice does Five have other than to teach his one and only niece a truly valuable life lesson?

In a place like this, she may need it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that went well.
> 
> [Tumblr](https://ancientstone.tumblr.com/)


	3. Weeping Willows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for violent animal death - skip from 'Five shoves Claire hard' to '“Uncle Five?” A small voice whimpers' to avoid it.

“Uncle Five! _Uncle Five!”_

Bolting upright so fast that it nearly turns his head dizzy, Five gets only half a second to brace before Claire all but launches at him, scrambling against his chest and shoving a knee into the pit of his stomach. Wheezing like the old man he is, a loud, undignified thing, he clambers to his feet, his arms looping around Claire’s shoulders and returning the clinging hug just as tightly, a furrow darkening his brow.

“What-”

A bellow of a bark shakes them both, and stepping back, Five’s attention snaps towards the open barn door, where a dog near the size of Claire snarls viciously, its lips pulled back to show slobbery black and pink gums. It strains hard against the collar around its neck, held in an iron grip by a man who’s face holds as much kindness as a fox chewing a lamb’s leg. Behind him, the woman from the inn peers over his shoulder, her gaze steely and disapproving.

“Shi-”

“We don’t take kindly to thieves.” The man spits, his stare unblinking and intense.

Swallowing slowly, Five studies the ferocious picture the three make, carefully manoeuvring Claire so she’s tucked behind his back, out of their direct line of sight. Her small hands snatch up bunches of his shirt, both his sweater and her jacket having been left to dry overnight on a line of string they found forgotten on a shelf.

“It’s alright.” Five says carefully, watching the man. “It’s okay, we’re not thieves-”

“You’re in our barn. You took our wood.” The man pointedly nods towards the blackened remains of their campfire, glaring down his nose. “I’d call that taking something that don’t belong to you.”

“Alright, yes, we did take a little bit of wood, but just a few logs, no more than six, just to warm up and dry our clothes.” He gestures towards the line, the movement making the dog bark. His niece flinches. “It was late, it was getting dark, and we’re lost. We would’ve frozen if we tried to keep going, and Claire-”

The dog lunges, heaving against the grip of its master as its front paws wave uselessly in the air, saliva gleaming against white canines. Claire all but screams, trying to shove herself even further behind him, and in a second Five is backing them up until they touch the far wall, his eyes fixed on the dog as his jaw clenches hard, practically biting on his tongue. Instincts flare, and his fists curl with the summoning of powers, only to have their call go unanswered, not a single flick of blue answering his command.

Suppressing a hiss of rage building behind his teeth, Five changes tactic. “Call off the mutt, asshole!”

The man’s face darkens dangerously. “Excuse-”

“She’s seven! She’s a kid! What the fuck do you think she’s gonna do?”

“Kids ain’t to be trusted.” The woman sneers. “You’re thieves and tricksters, the lotta you. They came from the woods as well, who knows what Devil spirits they possess.”

“We came from the woods because we’re _lost._ ”

“We’re sorry!” Claire sobs, and something within Five’s chest shatters, his hands squeezing her arms. “We’re sorry! We didn’t mean to!”

“Hush.” The woman spits.

Sucking in a deep breath, Five battles to control himself, fighting to smother out all the voices in his brain demanding he teach these bastards a lesson, inform them what exactly happens when you threaten an assassin’s only niece.

 _I wouldn’t be particularly opposed,_ Dolores hums, her anger making her voice clipped and thin.

Stiffly, with feigned diplomacy, Five manages a forced, “Look, we’ll leave. We’ll just walk away. You won’t ever see us again. There’s no need-”

“Don’t tell us what there is and isn’t a need for, boy.” The man grunts sharply, but then turns to the woman, muttering, his tone lowered. She pulls a face like she’s smelt something bad, crossing her arms unhappily, however after a long pause, nods once. The man returns to them. “You have until the count of ten to leave, or I’ll set my dog on you.”

“To _ten-_ ”

“One.” The man starts, unflinching. “Two.”

“Fuck, Claire, come on, we gotta go.” Snatching her wrist, Five hauls them in the direction of the door, his free hand snatching their dried clothes as they pass. It’s only sheer luck they both slept otherwise dressed, complete with shoes, or this would be on a whole other level of unpleasant.

“Three. Four. Five.”

Claire resists his tugging, whispering as she gawks wide-eyed at the dog, “Uncle Five...”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, come this side of me, I won’t let anything happen.” Five steers her along regardless of her soft whimpers, shoving them passed the couple who refuse to move an inch out of their way, the dog only just barely unable to reach them, though not for lack of trying on the canine’s part. 

Hot breath grazes Five’s exposed arm, minute flecks of warm spit freckling over his skin.

“Six. Seven. Eight.”

The drizzle of the night before has failed to let up in the slightest, meeting them with a welcoming spray as they step out onto the mud-slick road. The river churns with its feverish babbling, and the trees shiver in the cool breeze raking through their uppermost branches.

“Nine.”

“We’re out, we’re leaving.” Five calls to the couple, hurrying Claire in the direction of the bridge. “We won’t be anymore both-”

“Ten.” The man says.

His grip on the dog’s collar loosens.

Freed, the mutt springs forward.

Five shoves Claire hard. “Run!”

“Uncle Five!”

If she says anything else, it’s lost to him as the dog pounces, gaping maw open and paws ready to pin. Five whirls to face it, ducking low and tackling the beast right in the chest in a bid to keep it back from Claire, his feet slipping on the sodden earth as they collapse heavily in a mess of whirling limbs and deep-chested sounds of fury. The dog wiggles beneath him, snapping and snarling as Five digs his knee into its stomach, holding it down with every scrap of weight his pathetic prepubescent body has.

As quick as he physically can, Five shoves his elbow into the dog’s throat, pushing the point down right where the windpipe probably is, paws and legs beating against him, mudwater splashing his face.

“Uncle Five!” Claire wails.

“You brute!” The woman bellows at him in horror. “You animal!”

“Kill him, boy! Kill him!” The man demands of his dog.

Slush and muck slides beneath them, and a momentary jolt is enough for the dog to squirm over onto its belly, scraping at the dirt to get out from under him. Five clings on, wrapping his legs tight against its body, and cups his hands around the skull.

There’s no difference between dog and man, he discovers, as the neck snaps cleanly in two. Instantly the beast falls limp and lifeless, no more than a dead lump of fur and bone in the middle of the road.

Five, smeared with grime and panting hard in the cold air, slowly sits up, fixing his eyes on the now very silent couple who watch him in terror.

“Uncle Five?” A small voice whimpers, and Five glances over to see Claire the other side of the bridge, her brown eyes large and wet, her face snotty, her bottom lip just short of quivering.

Swallowing thickly, Five pushes himself heavily to his feet, facing the couple once again. 

They flinch, inching back.

For a second, he ponders quipping something smart and snarky, maybe something like the cheesy one-liners Luther used to shout on missions as kids, or Diego when he’s playing superhero, or even Klaus when he strolls up after everyone else kicked ass to gloat and claim credit. However, the pitiful sight of his niece is enough for Five to do nothing but remain in weary, resigned silence, turning on his heel and marching over the bridge. 

A small curl of fear that Claire will suddenly reject him curdles in his stomach as he approaches, but just as quickly it vanishes as she all but flies into his already open arms, sobbing and shaking.

Ever the smart button, despite being scared out her mind, she had the forethought to grab their clothes when he dropped them, and while she sniffles into his chest, he gently pries them from her, tugging her arms into the sleeves of her jacket and pulling up the hood before shoving his own sweater on, grimacing at the gross sensation of the wet fabric of his shirt shifting underneath. Five cleans off his face as best he can with his sleeve.

When the mud dries, he realises with a sigh, it’s going to be uncomfortable as fuck.

Fun.

“Come on.” He murmurs, clasping her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Claire doesn’t move or show any sign of having heard him, and a wodge of something heavy and bleak lodges itself in Five’s throat, tasting of bile and acid. He gulps it away fiercely.

“Okay, wrap your arms around my neck.” Technically, Claire’s getting too big for him to be comfortably able to carry her, at least in this teenage body, but he’s certainly tackled harder things in his life, so with a gritted determination he manages, just as he always does.

They need to get out of this place, to put distance between them and a couple ready to watch their dog tear children apart.

Doing as she’s told, Five lugs Claire up into his arms before setting off at a brisk pace along the road, not once peering back at the shit-hole they leave behind. Claire clings to him like a limpet, as if she believes he’s going to vanish the second she decides to blink, and for all that she’s a snotty mess, Five lets her burrow into his shoulder, hiccuping quietly.

Above the skies are grey and mournful, clouds bellowing together with thick, cotton-candy rolls and blocking out the sun. The sounds of the forest feel muffled, dimmed, like the entire world has been toned down due to the sorry weather. 

As his eyes scan the road ahead, it seems to Five that everything has been seeped to the core with rainwater, and in the dips and gouges of the poorly maintained path, puddles of brown-churned grit reflect the dismal world, some boasting islands of sodden and sunken leaves while others have boats of beech red or birch orange. Said puddles soak through the sorry soles of his sneakers, tingling his toes with their chilled water.

There are no birds, he notes with a soft jolt as they follow the road around a bend, or any other sounds of life, just them and the rapidly fading river.

It’s strange.

Her crying dying out into the noisy wheezes of a blocked nose, Claire settles against him, and they lapse into a worn silence. Rubbing a hand briefly up and down her back, feeling the dying hiccups under his palm, Five sets his jaw, fixes his gaze set ahead, and _thinks._

How the flying fuck is he going to get her home?

It’s dangerous, in the past. People’s priorities aren’t what they are in the twenty-first century. Deceit is as common as plague-carrying rats and those who wander the lonely paths are naive if they step foot beyond their door without so much as a sharply pointed stick. Murder is relatively easy to get away with, if given the right amount of forethought, he should know, and right now, as they make their way along, alone, down a road they don’t know, heading in the direction of who knows what, he and Claire are completely exposed to whoever might decide to interrupt their journey.

Claire’s a kid, she shouldn’t be exposed to that kind of stuff.

 _You can’t keep her ignorant,_ Dolores says carefully, _She needs to understand what’s going on._

His niece is many things, cheeky, bubbly, bright and smart, however she’s also headstrong and happy to do her own thing, even if she’s been told otherwise. Claire’s not unknown for the odd idea of sneaking off, the occasional slipping away from parental view or running ahead and ignoring the calls to stay in sight. Like all children her age, sometimes impulse just takes over, and Allison is forever sighing tiredly after her energetic daughter.

Here, however, that could be deadly.

She could vanish down the road and be grabbed by waiting thugs.

She could walk away in a crowded market, never to be seen again.

She could wander off after he told her to stay put, leaving Five to return to find her cold and broken and lifeless.

They have no money. At some point, Five’s going to have to find work, in turn meaning he’s going to have to trust her to do as he says. He can’t have her merrily skipping off and getting into trouble, not if they want to live long enough for him to calculate a way to get home.

If Claire died beforehand, if he failed her so badly that she didn’t make it, Five can’t honestly say what he would do, but the idea of trudging back home only to see Allison’s face, wide and hopeful and searching for her child, it would be enough to fucking break him.

She just a _kid._

A kid he’s responsible for, more so than he’s ever been before. This isn’t his siblings asking him to watch her for an evening or babysitting while Allison dives out for bread and milk. Claire’s entire wellbeing, emotional, physical, metal, solely rely on him right now, a dependant kid looking for him to provide everything she needs to survive.

He barely fucking made it in the apocalypse. He screwed up so many times, ate things he shouldn’t, drank too much, scrambled among the debris of places he probably should have avoided and curled up to sleep in the ruins of buildings ready to come down at a moment’s notice. 

Even back at home, back in the living world with his family, he’s a wreck. Dad’s whisky collection hasn’t been steadily going down by itself, Five hasn’t slept for a solid night since his return, and Dolores isn’t the only one who has picked up on his random feeding habits.

Dolores hums, _Easy, Five._

Claire has no idea who he is.

Claire doesn’t know him, not like his siblings do, not like Dolores. To Claire, he’s just Uncle Five, the uncle who’s older than he looks, who drinks coffee and has a skewed sense of humour that she doesn’t quite understand yet. They only properly met a week ago. There’s no way for her to know of the rivers of blood at his feet, the copper-red crimson staining his hands, the way his brain whirs with a thousand different scenarios to kill someone the second he meets them.

She doesn’t know he can be cruel, dangerous, an axe-wielding murderer happy to chop off arms and legs and heads.

Then again, his niece did just watch him end a dog.

Five’s arms wrap tighter around Claire, the fuzzy material of her damp jacket rubbing against his cheek.

He wants her happy and smiling, jumping about like a damn kangaroo.

He can’t be seen by Claire. 

Not now.

Not yet.

Not his niece, not the girl he spent countless nights missing despite never having met, who he pictured in his mind’s eye and pondered what her hobbies were, what flavour of ice cream she always went for and which doughnut was her favourite.

Claire’s too precious, and Five’s too selfish.

 _One step at a time,_ Dolores pipes up, ever soothing, ever gentle, _Just one step at a time._

“Uncle Five, can I get down?”

“Sure.” Pausing, Five lets Claire slide down to the ground, leaning back to examine her face. “You okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

He eyes her over. “You certain about that? It’s okay if you’re not.”

“I’m fine.” She says, quieter than normal. Her hand finds his. “Can we keep going?”

For a lack of anything else to do, Five merely nods, squeezing her fingers. 

Above, the branches of the trees sway together, what little leaves they still have clinging to their branches rattling against the limbs. The noise of the river has petered out, replaced only by the whisking wind snaking between the trunks and brambles.

“That dog was bad.” Claire whispers, not looking at him. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Very bad.”

“Is that why you killed it? Because it was bad?”

Bile spikes with heat in the pit of Five’s stomach, and he forces himself to breathe deeply, savouring the chilled sensation of cooled air in his windpipe.

“That dog had been trained to hurt people.” He tells her slowly. “We wouldn’t have outrun it, and right now my powers aren’t working.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But that dog would’ve caught us, Claire, and it would’ve hurt us. I…I’m sorry you had to see me do that, I didn’t-”

“That’s okay.”

“It’s really not.”

“Oh.”

Silence falls between them again, only this time heavier, weighted with unsaid words, swirling emotions battering like colliding gales. Five finds himself glancing away, off to the side, unable to look at the little girl who he probably just traumatised without thinking.

Because _of course_ he did, he’s a killer, that’s what he does.

“What’s that?”

“Hm?”

Slipping free, Claire meanders to the edge of the road, tilting her head at a trunk of a tree. Turning around, she points at it, asking again, “What’s that?”

“A tree?”

“No, _that._ ” A bit more insistent, Claire points harder. “All that black stuff.”

Walking over, Five leans down and follows her finger, finally spotting the oozes of black glooping out from between cracks in the bark. He hums under his breath, standing straight and gazing up at the branches high above them, twisted and gnarly. The trunk has several notches within it, hollows which give the timber an almost macabre appearance.

“It could be resin, or some kind of tar.”

“What’s resin?”

“It’s this really sticky liquid that trees make. It gets used to make all kinds of things, like Vanya’s rosin she uses on her bow.”

Claire contemplates that. “The hard honey stuff?”

“Yes. Though, resin isn’t usually black so-” Five’s breath catches when he glances towards Claire. “No, Claire, _stop!”_

Jumping, Claire shrinks away from him, snapping her fingers back from the gunk. “Huh?”

Taking her hand, Five uses his sleeve to quickly wipe the sludge off, taking note of the condition of her skin underneath. The junk will never come out of the fabric, a pity considering Vanya gifted the sweater to him, however the safety of his niece comes first. His sister will certainly agree to that.

“You _never_ stick your hand in something you don’t recognise. It’s dangerous. We don’t know what it is or what it could do to you.”

He learned that the hard way, in the apocalypse. He had all kinds of skin irritants and allergies there.

“But you said it was like Aunt Vanya’s honey stuff!”

“No, I was saying that it _could_ be, and I also said it’s not normally black. I don’t know for certain.”

“Isn’t it just a tree? I’ve seen tons of trees before.”

“Some trees are poisonous.” Turning her hand this way and that in the muted, rain-splattered light, Five scrutinises her fingertips, watching for signs of a forming rash. “And I don’t recognise this one at all, which, considering the intense survival training Dad made us do, says a lot.”

Claire pouts at him, clearly unhappy with his answer, but it’s so reminiscent of her usual inquisitive personality rather than the solemn, quiet child she had become over the course of the morning, that Five can’t find it in him to tut at her.

“Don’t put your hand near your face until we can wash it properly.” He instructs, standing. “Come on. Let’s get going before we lose the day.”

Taking his hand again, thankfully with her clean one, they set off, and after ten minutes Claire begins to gently whisper the familiar words of a particular tune to herself. The effort is lacklustre, but brighter than he would’ve expected her to be if asked earlier in the morning.

Tightening his hold, Five breathes out slowly, promising himself to let Claire sing her princess song as many times as she wants, as long as it keeps his niece the funny little girl he knows.

Still, as they walk, he can’t help but peer back over his shoulder in the direction of the tree, now hidden from view behind the rolling countryside and dense forest, scowling to himself.

Some kind of hybrid subspecies, perhaps?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so, in the next chapter something happens and unless you know Over the Garden Wall, it's going to be a bit bewildering. On one hand, it will be new to Five as well, so it won't be hard to follow or anything, but on the other hand I'm aware lots of people haven't seen the show.
> 
> Therefore...
> 
> [Here's a video which will give you more an idea what otgw is about without spoilers!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf6KZFIPY6I) Enjoy!
> 
> [Tumblr](https://ancientstone.tumblr.com/)


	4. Breadwinner Blues

The rain, while never outrightly spluttering into a proper autumnal shower, remains steadfast in its constant spray, floating as a fine, smothering mist. It sheets everything, leaving dew-round droplets hanging from the naked branches of the trees and making the small, non-descript sprouts of struggling foliage at the roadside droop beneath the weight.

It also does little to help Five’s thoroughly chilled face.

He can’t get over how hushed the world is.

There’s not an ounce of modern noise, no planes flying overhead, no distant cars rumbling along and honking at roadworks, just the unidentifiable sounds of a forest slowly falling asleep for winter, husks of trees being abandoned to the wills of the wind and weather. No one else crosses their path, be it traveller, trader, or highwayman, so they continue their journey alone, uninterrupted by well-meaning busybodies. 

He never realised, growing up, how much background noise he naturally tuned out. The Academy is located in the heart of the city, it needed to be for the sake of getting to mission locations quickly, meaning Five and his siblings were right at the middle of rush hour, bus routes, and the general foot traffic of a bustling population.

Then he was dumped in the apocalypse.

Gone were the people, and in came the rats, and cockroaches, and any other grotesque thing that fancied scampering among the corpses, small feet tapping lightly against the rubble. The fires, for the good year or so they bellowed in the distance, filled the world with a constant snapping and crackling, and old walls would give out and cave inwards at random intervals, jolting Five with their sudden, thunderous crashing.

Here, it’s different, almost eerie. There are no birds, no rustling of animals creeping through the undergrowth, just indifferent trees and the gloomy weather, a whole new environment for his ears to attune to. 

If Claire’s noticed the silence, then she’s elected it her job to fill it, chattering away at fifty miles per hour, her jacket zipped up and her hood pulled over her head.

“Chloe’s _just_ a friend because she never likes to share anything, but she has a dog and her Dad lets us take it for walks, so that’s ok. Amelia doesn’t have a dog, she has a hamster, but her room has this really fuzzy carpet that you can sink your feet into, and last time I went over she had these gel pens that smell like different fruit-”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did her gel pens smell like fruit?”

“I dunno, they just did. They’re cool, they make your pictures smell nice. Dad said the one I drew was like a fruit salad, but I don’t know what that is.”

Five shrugs, and Claire takes that as her cue to continue, switching onto a boy called Jacob who apparently has a thing about bugs.

When it was just him and Dolores, they used to talk complex math, theoretical science that wasn’t quite so theoretical, time paradoxes, wormhole theorem. Hours were lost calculating probabilities and possibilities, outcomes for outlandish situations which, to anyone else, would be pure fantasy, yet to Five and his screwed-up existence were simply daily life.

Now he’s discussing the schoolroom dynamics of the American education system with a seven-year-old, and the vast variety of clique groups capable of appearing in something as mundane as the second grade.

There was a journey, from point A to B, but Five’s not entirely sure how he travelled it.

At the very least, Five’s pleased to note Claire’s brightening mood, the tear stains long wiped away and snotty nose sniffed out of existence. 

Not, however, that Five is foolish enough to completely believe it.

His niece is a sensitive young girl, just like Allison was, _is,_ and the in same way her mother buried herself in work and movie roles to avoid the gaping hole of neglect they all felt in their core, Claire seems to be practicing the art of self-distraction, babbling away about everything and nothing.

Five lets her.

What else can he do? He’s a fifty-eight-year-old inside a barely-teenager’s body who grew up beneath the thumb of a man incapable of love and an hellhole wasteland. He’s out of practice with people, and frankly was never practiced with kids to begin with. After this morning, Claire needs a serious conversation with someone who can understand her emotions and can teach her the best ways to deal with them.

All Five can do is show her where Dad kept the best whiskey and how to cope with the hangover the morning after.

Claire doesn’t need him. She needs her parents, Grace, Vanya, fuck, even his shit-headed brothers, because despite being the biggest morons in the universe, they all still bring something to the table. The best Five can hope to manage is getting her back home in one piece, while also figuring out how to apologise to his sister for endangering her daughter.

Dolores sighs. _It might take time for Allison to come around, Five, prepare for that._

He pointedly ignores the comment.

Not missing a beat in her splurge of chatter, Claire starts up on a very long-winded and extremely detailed explanation on the daily struggles of her teachers (and are they in for one hell of a shock when they realise this seemingly average little girl is, in truth, outstandingly observant, and has picked up on not one but _two_ secret love affairs). Five nods along, letting most of her babbling go in one ear and out the other and humming when he needs to, only to then stop short as they crest over the top of a hill, blinking in surprise down at the busy village in the valley below.

Claire also pauses, her words dying out.

It’s not the biggest thing in the world, lining the edge of the road like two opposing riverbanks, the houses are small and market relatively plain. However, the chimneys splutter with rising smoke, promising warmth and a dry place to shelter and get their bearings, and where there’s people, there’s always food.

Another lesson Five picked up during his forty-five years.

These people are distinctively less dead, though. They would complain if he went around raiding their pantries. 

Not that he could just blink in and take what he likes, anyway, considering his powers are currently as useful as wet socks.

“Do you think they have a phone?” Claire asks, peering up at him and fiddling with her bracelet. “I was meant to call Dad yesterday, but I didn’t. Do you think he’ll be mad?” 

Five hasn’t told her yet, about the time travel. 

He has no idea how she’s going to react.

She might find it fun or she could be utterly terrified, and as the days and weeks go by, whatever emotion she feels towards him, be it good or bad, will only sour into a fermenting mess of accusations, homesickness, and anger.

He knows. He’s been there.

The longer Five is able to put it off, the higher the chances of him getting them home before she realises.

_She’s going to figure it out soon,_ Dolores warns, _You know how smart she is._

“I’m sure your Dad will understand.” Five placates, soothing over her worry. Truthfully, how Patrick would react to his daughter failing to meet their call schedule, he can’t say, but the man would likely blame Allison for it, going by what little Five has heard about him.

They descend down the slope of the hill, Claire hurrying to greet the village with great enthusiasm, gazing around at everything like a duckling suddenly thrown into a pond full of wonders. So eager in her effort to take in everything at once, her hood tumbles down to her shoulders, and Five takes the time to pause and yank it back over her hair.

A few odd folk notice them, sending quick, nosey glances their way, but for the most part they are left alone, Claire returning their stares with intrigue while Five glares from behind her back. These people swiftly move on.

It takes less than thirty seconds for his niece to clock the stables built against the wall of a lopsided house. Letting out a high-pitched, delighted shriek (which Five _doesn’t_ startle at, thank you), she goes dashing over, a whirl of dazzling pink and not caring an inch for the puddles in her path.

Her shoes are already ruined beyond repair. Five is long beyond the stage of trying to keep them clean.

Three of the stalls are empty, but the other two are occupied by a dappled grey mare who shakes her mane at the approaching girl and stomps off out of reach, and a chestnut brown shire who lowers its head, its ears flicking at the small girl bouncing up to it. 

Claire’s face brightens, and with a surprisingly skilled hand she pets it gently on the nose, giggling when it lips at her fingertips with the kind of gentleness only giants ever seem to be able to manage.

As kids, Allison went through a phase of being horse mad, though Dad continuously denied her the chance to have a pony of her own. She did, however, manage to convince the old man to give them lessons, and for three weeks straight he and his siblings, Vanya excluded, were carted off to some ranch on the outskirts of the city and drilled to a military standard the art of riding, caring, and generally being around horses of almost every ilk.

The saddle sore had been horrific, and by the time they stumbled back home they were all limping and wincing whenever they sat down. Grace had offered soft pillows for their seats at the dinner table. Dad had shot that idea down quickly enough.

“Learn from the pain, children!” He demanded. “Embrace it!”

Allison may have signed Claire up for horse riding lessons, given the money she has at hand to spend on that sort of thing, and it’s possible that a small pony was yet another item on the apparently endless list of presents she delights in pampering her daughter with.

Even if Claire doesn’t have one, it could still happen as a giant _fuck you_ to Patrick, considering Claire lives with him most of the time and he would be the one responsible for carting her back and forth to the stables.

If she gets home from this.

Five watches her, something heavy in his throat.

Claire can’t turn out like him, jaded, and scorned by a lifetime of bitter time travel cruelties. 

His niece deserves better, his _family_ deserves better. They have been through so much, in their young lives, and Five’s done no better than Dad the last year, dragging them all through the wringer and spitting them out the other side. They deserve rest, they deserve the ease of a mundane, boring life, they deserve getting to watch their niece and daughter grow into a young woman with her whole life stretching far out ahead of her.

Claire can’t return in a whirl of blue, snapping harsh truths and drinking her sorrows down to the bottom of a decanter.

She can’t be him.

An inhale of chilled air catching his throat, Five rapidly blinks, stumbling over a strained cough that threatens to turn high and distressed. Claire glances over to him, her hand still carefully petting the shire’s nose.

Before she has the chance to ask if he’s okay, Five jabs his thumb further down the street, forcing out a tight, “I’m going to check out the inn over there, alright? Stay here. I mean it, Claire.”

She huffs at him, already turning back to the horse. “I will.”

“No wandering off.”

“I won’t.”

For a second, he pauses, watching, the heavy thing from his throat migrating down like thick, cold slime to the base of his stomach, sewage water running into a pristine stream. 

Claire doesn’t notice his lingering, too preoccupied, oblivious to the whole host of chaos looming over her shoulders thanks to Five and his glitchy powers. A small part of him wants to reach out and apologise for dragging her into such a colossal mess.

“Cowardness is unbecoming.” His Father told him once. “Are you a coward, Number Five?”

Fingers digging hard into fists, Five turns on his heel and retreats, ignoring the ache of his jaw from the near unbearable clenching of his teeth. He keeps his eyes firmly on the rather dull-looking inn, _The Headless Hen,_ according to the swinging sign.

_Five._

“Not now, Dolores.”

_The longer you put it off, the worse it will be. You have to tell her._

“Quiet.” Unlatching the door, Five shoves it open. “Let me concentrate.”

Just before entering, he throws another glance towards Claire, who is, on this occasion, staying where she was told. The shire is pressing its nose into her hair (because of course her hood is down again), sniffing and lightly nibbling, much to Claire’s delight.

If Five has to wash out horse snot later, she will have no one to blame but herself.

Ideally, he would have Claire at his side, in arm’s reach should any unwelcome bastards decide to get curious about the two kids stumbling out of the woods. But he needs to talk details with someone, work out exactly when and where they are, and it wouldn’t do to have Claire overhear that and come to unwanted conclusions.

Not to mention that, after their last encounter with an innkeeper, he can’t be certain that staying outside or coming in makes a whole host of difference to their safety.

With a final sigh, Five tears his gaze away and steps into the room and allowing the door to fall shut behind him. 

He has prepared for this, and already drifting through the back of his head is a _poor-lost-kid_ sob story, one full of scared children and terrible dogs, the type of thing designed to get soft personalities pitying and protective souls offering aid.

Not to mention that he probably looks a sight, smeared with mud from his fun playtime session with a slobbering mutt and wearing clothes which have seen better days. Any bleeding hearts should instantly melt, given the right amount of tears.

Five starts towards the first figure he sees, but before he so much has time to open his mouth, the words are dying on his tongue, his eyes widening as his brain stutters.

Then it stutters again.

The once more, for good measure.

A nice, long, almost mocking beat of silence fills the inn, and, collectively, the heads of seven giant hens turn towards him.

Not just the type of giant that makes sense, the kind that requires big ovens to cook and could happily feed his entire family at Christmas. That’s normal, a utilisation of modern science, smart farming techniques, and selective breeding to create a bird of a suitable size and quality.

There’s nothing logical about this.

There’s absolutely _nothing_ logical about this.

“The fuck…”

Five has dealt with a lot in his life, horror, despair, a sense of hopelessness that felt as if the entire contents of his ribcage were dropping out to greet his stomach. It takes a lot to knock him for six these days, he grew up with a talking chimpanzee and robot mother for fuck’s sake, yet, as he gapes, his mouth opening and closing with an utter lack of direction, he can’t help but mildly think he may have met his limit.

The hens stare back, blinking large, unintelligent eyes, tilting their heads and warbling.

They easily tower above him, rivalling, if not beating, Luther in terms of just how tall they stand. They certainly match his brother in broadness, feathers as long as Five’s arm smoothed out over each huge wing, claws like pic-axes scraping against the scratch-marked floorboards.

Three wear forest-green waistcoats embroidered with cornflowers. Two have red cloaks draped over their backs, high collars framing their thick necks. One has a bonnet of pale pink, and the final sports a straw-stitched necklace of interwoven wheat strands, tried neatly with a blue ribbon.

It’s this last one that squawks at him, golden-yellow beak spitting in his direction, and the others fluster themselves to join in, clucking and squabbling and fluffing themselves, as if it is a great controversy that Five’s here, some shocking scandal, and if he doesn’t leave in the next three seconds then the world may spontaneously combust.

It still might.

“What the fuck?” He demands, taking a step back. He bumps into the door. “What the _fuck?”_

Five’s dealt with some shit in his lifetime, but this takes the entire fucking cake.

He can’t even fathom anything else to say. This is miles beyond the apocalypse, the Commission, billionaire assholes and women giving birth despite not being pregnant when the day first began.

Ghosts, time travel, tentacle monsters that burst from the chest and rumouring siblings. Those Five knows, understands, can categorise into neat boxes, and go months without contemplating or worrying over.

_This_ is a whole new level of bullshit.

It can’t be real.

The thought strikes through his mind like a lightning bolt, loud and sudden and enough to startle him.

There’s no way this can be real.

Which vomits a whole plethora of other questions, the unstable kind, with doubts creeping in between the cracks of what he once believed to be solid truth.

Is he high? Has he taken something, or was given something? Has the Commission finally tracked him down for revenge, locking away his mind in this nonsensical, dreary world?

Has Five finally snapped? Is this what a mental breakdown is? After so many years of burying everything, his hopes, his fears, his siblings, did something finally tip him over the edge into complete lunacy? 

If it did, Five can’t remember it, and he can’t truthfully tell if that makes it better or worse. He’s a trained assassin, and something like that doesn’t go away overnight. If he has lost the last of his marbles, he could seriously injure someone, even kill them, despite not being in the driver’s seat.

His breathing staggering, his gaze turning distant, disconnected, glazed over with whirlpooling fear, Five tries desperately to think back, to recall a conversation, a trigger, anything which could point him in the direction of what happened, what’s going on, how he came to be in this damp, backwards world.

All he gets is a great expanse of nothing.

They stopped the apocalypse.

They were helping Vanya.

Claire was staying with them.

Then, he and his niece were walking through the wood, trying to get home.

“Oh fuck…” Five whispers.

_Claire._

If this is all in his head, if none of this is real, then what does that mean for Claire?

Is she just a figment of his imagination?

Is she a scrap of reality breaking through?

Is she a familiar image for his brain to cling to as it slowly descends into who knows what, a known face that has never caused him pain or strife, unlike his Father and his siblings?

A loud, angry squawk to his right sends Five all but flying, and he snaps around to face a cockerel, bigger than even the hens, as it stalks forwards towards him, a black smoking pipe wedged precariously in its beak.

It tosses its head back and crows, harsh and noisy and tuneless, the red, fleshy comb on its head waggling with each jerky movement.

Five fucking _flees._

The spray of rain greets him.

On uncoordinated legs that feel somehow numb to the rest of his body, Five staggers into the middle of the road, staring at the village, the woods, the people, with renewed eyes, unsure if he is able to trust them, unsure if everything he sees won’t melt away into a mess of colour and shapes.

It all looks normal. Average. A typical day in the past.

Yet as he peels his gaze back to the inn, several chicken heads peer out the door after him, scowling despite a lack of eyebrows.

This isn’t normal. None of this is normal.

“Uncle Five?” A young voice pipes up, and Five blinks, slowly twisting to face Claire. The young girl looks up at him, each detail, down to the confused furrow of her brows, the picture of the daughter Allison brought to the Academy. “I’m hungry.”

“Right.” Is all Five can manage to croak, scanning her up and down, searching for anomalies, mistakes, anything that could suggest his brain is fabricating this child’s whole existence.

Her voice is the same.

He hates that her voice is the same.

“Can I go get food at the market?” Claire asks, pointing in the direction of the stalls. Five follows her finger, gulping heavily.

He doesn’t really think about it, simply nodding a stiff, absent, “Sure.”

“Oh! Thank you!”

With that the Maybe-Claire takes off, a streaking blur of pink against the gloomy greys. Five watches her go, watches her disappear off into the crowd, and the instinctive need to fist his hands and catch up with her tugs at him.

No power comes forth, not even the smallest hint of blue. Even on his most starved days of the apocalypse, there was always the smallest of ripples, a pathetic tease for what he couldn’t reach.

_You’re an idiot._

Five jolts at the sound of Dolores.

“What?”

_I said, you’re an idiot._

“I don’t-”

_That’s your niece, Five, not an alien._

“This isn’t real.” Releasing a shuddery exhale of air, Five frowns back at the inn, the beginnings of all kinds of spiralling thoughts starting to tumble like the logs of a bursting beaver’s dam.

It’s as if the sound of Dolores’ voice has kicked him back into gear, his bone-deep feverish desperation for answers _(time travel, the apocalypse, the, eye, Harold Jenkins)_ falling back into its smothering blanket, making his fingertips itch for chalk. 

“This can’t be real, Dolores, this is too much, it’s too…It’s too _stupid._ Giant animals, wearing clothes, I can’t-”

_I’m not saying the situation isn’t idiotic as well,_ Dolores cuts in, _However, I promise that Claire isn’t a figment of your imagination, Five._

“How can you know that? How can you _possibly_ know that? Fuck, this has to be something else. Maybe I _did_ time travel, but I lost my mind on the way. Maybe I’ve finally acorn-ed-”

_I’d know, Five._ She makes a sound, not quite a chuckle, not quite pitiful, a funny mix of in between. _Call it women’s intuition._

“But-”

_Five, think logically for a moment. You’ve had nightmares, when has a dream ever been this real? And we both know well enough that if this was your mind’s doing, then Claire would have yelled at you by now, or accused you of something, or died horribly._

He flinches at that.

The nightmares, they always scream at him _(Why didn’t he do this? Why did he fail to do that?),_ their faces ranging from the lifeless strangers he passed when raiding schools for supplies to the well-known smiles of the siblings. Sometimes, asteroids would hit the Earth as he sat at the dinner table, or great fires would sweep through during a mission he was never there to witness, leaving nothing but burnt husks in their wake.

Five dreams of disaster, and so far, this isn’t it.

They have been here for over a day now. They even slept.

_I don’t know what’s going on._ Dolores continues, calm and steady. Five matches his breathing to her voice. _But, to some extent, it’s real, and Claire is too._

“Fuck…” He exhales, wobbly, the skin of his face cool as he furiously rubs his palms into his eyes. “I…Okay. Okay, Dolores.”

_I will also take this moment to mention your niece is nowhere to be seen-_

“Shit!”

Slapped out of the barrage of mayhem that currently takes residence inside his brain, Five all but flings himself off in the direction Claire headed, weaving between the people and market stalls. His head whips back and forth, searching for the splash of pink among the earthy browns and off-colour whites which make up everyone’s dimmed coloured clothes, matching almost perfectly the downtrodden atmosphere provided by the weather.

Just this morning he was promising himself to keep a close eye on her, less the worst happened, and now-

“Uncle Five!”

“Oh, thank fuck.” Visibly deflating, Five locks onto the waving figure of Claire beside one of the stalls, sheltered beneath a large cloth cover which has been propped up as a roof, protecting the goods beneath. He hurries over, searching for signs of damage. “You alright? I lost sight of you, I couldn’t-”

“I’ve got a job!” Claire declares proudly, spinning to show off an ill-fitting pinny she has hanging from her shoulders, far too big and swamping her. “Do you like it? Minnie said I couldn’t have any of the bread because you can’t expect to get something from nothing, but then she _also_ said that if I worked for her for the day, then she’d let us eat a whole loaf!”

“Right.” Five says, turning his attention to the person at the other end of the table.

A woman, short, plump, with curls of dark hair, stands there, openly watching them. She also sports a pinny, one stained with splashes of red, which, after a glance at the goods on sale, Five deduces to be strawberry jam. A pocket bulges with pennies, and the other carries a half-eaten loaf of blackened bread that was obviously left in the oven for too long.

The rest of the loaves are spread across a white sheet for customers to peruse, shining with tempting glazes and wafting hunger-inducing smells into the damp air.

“This your girl?” The woman asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh, not-”

“You shouldn’t let no young’uns go running off ‘round here.” She scolds, wagging a finger in his direction. “It’s not safe. Keep a better eye on ya daughter, mista!”

“My-” Looking at Claire and then back towards Minnie, Five squints at the woman. “She’s _seven_ and I’m…I’m _thirteen._ That doesn’t make any-”

Claire smothers her mouth with her hands, attempting to laugh quietly. Between her fingers, she snickers, “Uncle Five’s my _uncle,_ Minnie! He’s not my Dad!”

Minnie huffs, sticking her nose up. “I should think so too! Babies shouldn’t be havin’ no babies!”

Five finds himself turning his gaze skywards in search for answers. Instead, he finds a soggy sheet roof, and a strange little longing for the days when he was mistaken for Klaus’ son. At least that made sense.

Still, if this woman is willing to occupy and feed Claire for the rest of the day, then Five will bite his tongue and bear it. Working here will give her something to do and him the space to head off and try to get his head around what the flying hell is going on.

“Actually, I have a question.” Five fixes his gaze on Minnie, ignoring the way Claire continues to giggle at him. “Where are we?”

“What d’you mean _where?”_ Minnie tuts, passing a roll to a man who had silently walked up to the stall. A shiny coin gets handed over, and then dropped into her pinny pocket. “This ol’ town’s called Ambergate, _everyone_ knows that! Best bread in the land!”

“Right, and this land is?”

Minnie inspects him for a second, before dropping her eyes down to Claire, who’s grown bored of their conversation and is now turning all the jam jars so that their handwritten labels face the front, humming to herself. A frown scrunches along Minnie’s brow, the slightly haughty expression falling away into something hard to read. 

After a moment, she shuffles up to him, leaning close.

Five leans away.

“Are ya new?” She asks, her voice quiet.

“New?”

“To the Unknown?”

“The Unknown?” Five repeats, not understanding. “What-”

“Oh dear, when the young’uns get lost, it’s always so sad.” Minnie laments, accepting some unsaid answer Five never intended to give her and then walking away, shaking head. “Oh, deary me.”

Five is quick on her heels. “The Unknown? What do you mean _the Unknown?_ Unknown what?”

“Now don’t you go askin’ questions I can’t answer.” Grabbing a small chalkboard, Minnie starts scraping away with a swirly white chalk, oddly writing the same thing, _‘Bread: One Piece’,_ three times. “No one does well askin’ questions.”

“I’m not asking questions for nothing! I need to figure out how to get us home, how to get _Claire_ home!”

“I’m okay, Uncle Five!” Claire chimes in, grinning broadly as she rearranges the more decorative breads, complete with little dough birds perched on top, into neat piles. “This is fun!”

She was almost torn to shreds by a vicious dog this morning.

He startles when Minnie pats him in the shoulder, taking several large steps back until her hand drops.

“Those who get lost always have their journey come to an end, one way or the other.” She tells him meaningfully, her brows pinched above her nose. “When the time comes, you’ll know.”

“That’s vague.”

Minnie sniffs. “I don’t have ta tell you anything. Now, you gonna work or not?”

“Wha-” A pinny, grubby, stinking of sweat, and clearly the least desired of the ones on offer, gets thrown at his head, and as it slides down Five finds Minnie pinching her face at him.

“I ain’t gonna spend all day gabblin’ with lost children. Now, I made a deal with this little ‘un, do you want feedin’ too? Or do you wanna go hungry for the rest of the day?”

Sighing slowly, Five strains his best smile onto his face, his teeth piercing into his tongue.

“Good.” Minnie snips. “And clean up ya face! You’re covered in mud!”

He could kill this woman in eight different ways with just the items on the table.

_Patience,_ Dolores says, and she almost sounds amused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Insert chicken pun here*
> 
> [Tumblr](https://ancientstone.tumblr.com/)


	5. Memory Misery at the Fallen Tree

Five can’t breathe. 

Trapped on the wind like leaves on a rushing current, heated embers of ash blow hard against his face, catching on his eyelashes and tangling hot into his knotted hair. It crawls across his clothing, his pitiful uniform not designed to withstand the end of the world, wiggling down beneath the collar where it burns him, irritates him, singeing the white material until he fears that one wrong flake will set him ablaze.

The wind keeps howling, the ash keeps coming.

It bellows like thick blizzard snow, and whereas before it was no more than a tumbling flow of weeping specs of grey, scattered but constant, now it collides fiercely against everything in its path, battering what’s weak, breaking the unsteady, and smothering the rest out of sight. 

Five’s breathing lurches as he struggles to take a mouthful of clean air, his hand thrown up in front of his eyes in a useless attempt to peer through the onslaught. His shoes trip on bodies. His knee grazes the jagged edge of a wall. His blazer whips behind him, begging to be set free and lost to the wailing fury.

“Vanya!” Five screams into the night, ash coating his tongue. “Ben! Dad!”

Something snaps beneath his foot and his ankle rolls, sending Five plunging down to the ground where his palms sing with pain as they collide with a soft bed of scorching cinders. His startled gasp chokes grit and gunk into the back of his throat, making him splutter, wheeze, spitting out a glob of something dead-skin grey.

“P-Please…” He sobs at the earth, heat blistering his exposed knees. “Anyone…”

No voice returns his pleas. There is nothing, bar the banshee whisking up the thunderous storm, the wind whistling against his ears, and the hundred sounds of an already crumbled world shattering into splintered fragments.

Then, suddenly, there is smoke, and soot, and the jumping noise of crackling. A light blooms in the corner of his vision, and Five turns to find fire looming above him, great orange flames rearing like a tsunami wave about to break. It seems to roar with its brutality, clambering towards him with white-hot fingers.

Five scrambles backwards, desperation screaming in his chest and terror rattling between his ribs. Bits of snapped metal with sharpened ends snag at his clothes, cutting and drawing blood, and bricks and mortar leave bruises that will sting for days.

Yet, somehow, he doesn’t feel any of it, too far gone with wide-eyed fear too care.

Still the fire comes, its reach pounding against the ash and the dirt. There’s a gaping maw in the middle of it, filled with blazing teeth, a forked tongue flicking out towards Five and sending sparks spewing at his face.

“No, no, please!” He begs. “Please, don’t!”

From deep within the flaring inferno, something dark rises up, as if a villainous monster emerging from the depths of an endless lagoon. It’s square, and pointed, and tall, and as Five’s back smacks against the remnants of a wall, a jolt of realisation shoots up his spine, an icy cold shiver among sweltering heat, his pounding heart freezing as his eyes suddenly comprehend.

This shadow, burning from the inside out, is the Academy, lost within the body of an apocalyptic wildfire.

“No! No, no wait!” All but flying to his feet, Five sprints towards it, his voice raw as he yells, “Guys! Guys, where are you?”

“Uncle Five?”

“Luther! Diego!”

“Uncle Five, are you okay?”

A hand touches his own, and Five bolts, scrambling upright with a yelp and all but braining himself against a solid surface overhead, earning a loud, uncensored, _“Fuck!”_

His arms jump to wrap around his throbbing skull, Five staggering slightly as he stands there, panting, shaking, uneven breaths rasping through his dry mouth.

Slowly, achingly so, to the point where it takes more than a moment to notice, the ash, the rubble, the wind, and the fire melt away, the steady sound of falling rain easing into his hearing. The stench of sodden earth breaks through the smoke, and as he blinks damply, gulping down a mouthful of sand-quality saliva, Five spots Claire sprawled across the ground just out of arm’s reach, staring uncertainly at him.

Beside her, their meagre campfire glows, catching the pink hues of her outfit.

 _Easy._ Dolores hums. _Easy, Five._

Hesitantly, his arms fall back to his sides. The wheezing calms, a little.

“I…Uh…Claire, I…”

Five’s fists clench, relax, and then clench again, his tongue inching forward to lick at his lips as the world returns to a fine-tuned sharpness. 

They are beneath an upturned tree, out in the middle of nowhere because they couldn’t find a town to hunker down in before the light began to fade. The trunk is an old thing, rotten in places and sporting fluffy green mold in the cracks, however the earth underneath is dry, and there is just enough space for both of them to fit comfortably.

Inhaling through his nose and tasting the metallic twang of wet soil, Five forces his breathing to slow, carefully sliding back down the trunk onto his ass, his fingers finding the soil. For a minute he simply sits there, making a point of feeling the dirt as it nestles under the whites of his nails.

Claire doesn’t move.

He scared her, it’s clear by the expression on her face.

A lump settles in his throat.

“Sorry.” He croaks, unable to look at his niece. “I’m sorry, Claire. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

A beat of silence hangs between them, tense and strange, and then, wordlessly, Claire crawls over, plonking herself down onto his lap (momentarily winding Five, though she doesn’t seem to notice) and wrapping her arms tight around his chest, curling up against him. Automatically he returns the gesture, feeling as she shakes a little.

He spooked her.

“It’s okay.” Murmuring into her hair, Five pulls her closer, running a hand up and down her arm. “I’m sorry. It’s okay. We’re both okay.”

Claire sniffs.

If Five had taken the time to think when they first settled down in their makeshift camp, he would have realises letting himself doze off was a bad idea. Nightmares are frequent visitors to his childish bedroom at home, sneaking up the stairs most evenings to haunt the darkened corridors and scratch at his door. They aren’t always explosive, more often than not leaving him startling awake without any noise at all, however it’s not unknown for him to rouse a sibling or two, occasionally even managing to summon Grace to pop in and check everything is fine.

It’s embarrassing, to be honest.

At least Dad’s booze helps. With Klaus as dry as sawdust, it leaves plenty for him to peruse as he selects his poison of choice.

Five was fine the night before in their squatter shed, so much so that it didn’t even occur to him that he’d been blessed with dreamless sleep, instead nodding off peacefully and waking to a dog trying to eat their faces. It must have made him complacent, and with everything else going on, it completely slipped his mind.

Claire squirms, bringing her arms close to herself instead of hugging him. Absently, she fiddles with her bracelet, sliding it off her wrist and making the pink resin glow in the amber light.

“Hey.” Nudging her gently, Five leans down. “Talk to me.”

“You were loud.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was scary.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She purses her lips, and then begins to nibble at them, her eyes still on her bracelet. “Why did you scream?”

“I had a nightmare, Claire.”

“Oh.”

 _Elaborate,_ Dolores insists in the back of his head, _Explain it to her._

“I…It…” 

His mouth stubbornly closes against his will, and Five forces himself to take a deep breath, shuffling to better distribute Claire’s weight across his lap. She really is getting too big for him to be able to comfortably offer this type of coddling.

Claire peers up at him, her lovely brown eyes glistening with unshed tears.

Attempt two goes better. 

“I was alone for…For many years. Lots of sh-” He quickly corrects himself, “ _Bad_ things happened, while I was there. Sometimes when I’m asleep I have nightmares about those bad things, and they make me yell.”

“You were calling for Uncle Luther and Uncle Diego and Uncle Ben and Aunt Vanya.” Claire lists off quietly, slipping her bracelet back on. “Were they the ones who did the bad things?”

“No.” Five says firmly. “No. I was searching for them. They weren’t hurting me.”

“Oh. That’s good.” She shifts against him, this time leaning more fully against his chest and shoulder. Her fingers find the dried black stains of the tree maybe-resin on his sleeve, and absently pick at the edge of it, her nail catching.

He rests his cheek on the top of her head. “You know none of us would ever hurt you, right?”

“Mom hurt me, but I don’t remember.”

 _Oh dear,_ Dolores murmurs.

The whole turmoil of Allison rumouring her daughter is a topic neither Five nor any of his siblings willingly touch with a ten-foot barge pole. It’s a mess, of both legal proceedings and emotional fallout, and Allison is suffering the guilt of it enough without any of them trying to casually bring up her biggest mistake into everyday conversation.

Obviously, there’s been words between Claire and Patrick, _of course_ there has, she’s as much his daughter as she is Allison’s, and his entire grounds for divorce and custody rights fringe on the safety and wellbeing of Claire.

If Five says the wrong thing, Claire could go blabbering back to Patrick, who in turn could very easily revoke the flimsy permission he gave for Claire to visit Allison, and by extension, the rest of them.

“She did.” He agrees because that’s the truth of the matter. “And you don’t have to forgive her if you don’t want to. But I also know there’s not a day that goes by without your Mom wishing she hadn’t.”

“Dad said it was wrong.”

“It was.”

“Then why did she do it?”

“Because…”

Because Allison had an upbringing in a house where love and care were dished out like limited treats offered to starving dogs. Because she never had a guiding hand to teach her that rumouring her way in and out of situations wasn’t how she should behave. Because when she became a mother, there was no one there willing to help her learn how to raise a child, and how to deal with the mayhem that comes with it while still giving her daughter free will.

Because she’s a Hargreeve. Unhealthy habits breed in their genetic makeup.

 _Careful what you say, Five._ Dolores warns.

“Sometimes people make mistakes. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people, or than they can’t learn never to do it again, but it can still hurt regardless. You Mom…” Sweet fuck, Five is not built for this. “You Mom did something that wasn’t nice, and she shouldn’t have-”

“Which hurt me.”

“Yes.”

“But she’s also sorry.”

“Yes, she is, Claire. When she’s not with you, she misses you so much.”

Claire makes a small humming noise, and a glance down reveals that her eyes are starting to droop.

Around the width of a yawn, she asks, “If I don’t forgive her, does that mean I can’t see her again?”

“No. You don’t have to forgive her for what she did, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be with her, or visit her, or call her anytime you want. Sometimes…” A small, genuine smile quirks up the corner of Five’s mouth. “Sometimes my brothers get on my nerves, a lot, and sometimes they say things or do things which hurt me. Most of the time I can forgive them, but sometimes I don’t.”

“But you still live with them.” Claire finishes, beginning to doze.

“But I still live with them, and have dinner with them, and join in with all their nonsense.”

Her head nods against his chest. “So, I don’t have to forgive Mom, but I can still love her.”

Five gently squeezes her. “Yes.”

“Oh. Good. I was worried it wasn’t allowed.”

“It’s allowed.” He chuckles, and then stills, leaning back against the trunk of the tree as he feels Claire dip further into sleep, her breathing slowing.

 _Well,_ Dolores pipes up, nearly making him jump, _That could’ve gone a whole lot worse._

“Shh.” He scowls in the direction of the fire, listening as Claire finally falls asleep.

Outside, the rain splatters, continuing its thorough soaking of the forest around them. Off in the distance, frogs croak, likely enjoying the soggy weather, and through the tips of the trees the wind tickles, making the bare brunches clack together and the leaves rustle.

The nights were strange in the apocalypse.

As soon as the sun set below the horizon, a hazy smear of orange and red blurred by the fog of ever falling ash, it seemed as if all light was sucked out of existence, as if the world suddenly narrowed all the way down to just Five and the pitiful glow of his campfire. It was only in the later years that the stars began to emerge, the odd splatter of tiny dots peeking through the heavy clouds, but up to his thirties Five was left with a bleak, dull sky, one suffocating on smoke, hiding the rest of the universe from viewing his meagre, almost useless existence.

If the sky was grim, then the ground was merciless.

He was literally living within a disaster zone, the remnants of some great catastrophe that he could barely comprehend. It left its mark on things, and not just the crumbling remains of buildings and the spray of charred corpses ready and waiting to appear with each overturned brick and wall.

Chemicals oozed from hazard marked containers, trickling purple and white and black.

Five would touch something, fuck knows what, and his hands would be itchy and sore for days.

Sometimes, great mists of unknown hazes would blow in from across the sea, and Five would be forced to retreat down into cellars and basements, cloth wrapped around his face and goggles strapped tightly over his eyes.

Dolores hated those days. They always seemed to last forever.

By the skin of his teeth, Five clawed his way through each hardship, as it feels he’s always doing with everything. Growing up, he prided himself, perhaps too much, on his adaptability, at his will to strive for greatness, whatever it entailed.

The nights, though, was when the horror of his situation would make itself at home.

He tried to fight it, the bleak corners of his mind that ran haywire the second the endless dark crept across the sky. Five would build fires brighter than necessary, he would read aloud to block out the whistling silence, he would think, and analyse, and go over everything he’d thought about over the course of the day, relaying every scrap of it to Dolores as he tucked into a can of beans.

Five is a person of logic, and logically he knew that he was the last person left alive on Earth, and that only the odd rat, cockroach, or suffocating scavenger bird were his real companions at the end of the world.

That did little, however, to stop the tumbling of rubble in the distance from turning into footsteps, or random clothes caught on the wind floating into the clothes on a person, bouncing as their silent feet ran among the chaos and destruction. Creaks of pylons and telegraph poles morphed into shoes edging closer, ready to grab him from behind, and the bizarre whines of the breeze, caught between crevices until they sang, became muted breathing, invisible eyes spying on the horizon, where Five’s campsite fire couldn’t touch.

Paranoia was his friend, in the apocalypse.

Even now, as he holds Claire close to keep her warm in the cooling temperatures, he can feel it prickling along the back of his neck. It itches at his skin, the need to snap around, scan the gloom, peer out into the oily blackness of the forest in search of a prying gaze. 

There is life here, more than he ever saw in the land of ash and smoke. That could mean anything may be lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce, waiting to stalk, waiting for the single moment Five lets his guard down and pays the ultimate price.

They are in an unknown world, be it universe, timeline, or dimension, who is to say that it is merely a normal threat out in the gloom? Five’s encountered time-travelling assassins, tentacle monsters, and talking chimps, perhaps the thing out there is giant, and broad, and capable of splintering the fragile bones of his niece without so much as a second’s thought.

Five’s powerless right now, and for all of Reginald’s training and the rigorous assignments of the Commission, he is, ultimately, still stuck in a thirteen-year-old’s body, with all the weaknesses that comes with it. He got lucky with the dog, but what if that was a one off? What if something approaches on silent paws, and he’s utterly helpless to protect Claire? 

What would he tell Allison?

In the apocalypse, it was just Five. He only ever had to worry about himself, and if he made a mistake, fine, he was the only one left to deal with the repercussions. Dolores was free to huff and chastise him until the sun rose and fell, but she would remain safe regardless.

Claire’s different. She’s _important._ She’s the niece he didn’t know he had until she was already taken away. 

He can’t let anything happen to her.

Carefully, as to not wake Claire, Five reaches across and picks up the small blackboard and chalk he stole from Minnie when her back was turned. With his sleeve already dirtied by the black resin, he wipes away her scrawl of _‘Bread: One Piece’_ , smearing it out into nonexistence. 

Then, with one last glance down at his niece sleeping on his lap, Five falls into the rhythmic tapping of calculations, letting his mind haze over with numbers until the first streaks of morning’s cloud-covered light rises between the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, yelling from the rooftops: SOFT UNCLE FIVE! SOFT UNCLE FIVE!
> 
> [Tumblr](https://ancientstone.tumblr.com/)


	6. The Old Windmill

“Uncle Five, I’m cold.”

“I know.”

“My toes are wet.”

“I know.”

“I can’t feel my fingers!”

“I know, Claire.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Five grits his teeth. Hard. “Because I feel it too.”

Despite his hopes, the rain shower failed to let up overnight, greeting the morning with its constant splattering and dripping. It doesn’t fall hard, not enough to soak someone to the bone the second they step outside, however, it churns the mud unpleasantly, turning it to sludge which sucks at their shoes as they try to navigate the widening puddles appearing like potholes in the road. 

After an hour of walking their clothes have become uncomfortably wet, and Claire didn’t protest his insistence on pulling her hood up this time, her jacket zipped all the way to the chin. Unfortunately for Five, his attire leaves a lot to be desired, his hair dribbling close to his skull and sticking against his forehead.

It’s as pleasant as it sounds.

 _You should have stayed in Ambergate,_ Dolores muses aloud, _You could have found a room for the night._

He has little choice but to admit the truth of that, as he hunches his shoulders against the wind and valiantly tries to ignore the squelching of his sodden socks. If he had been thinking clearer at the time, Five would have realised that rushing off the moment Minnie released them was not the wisest of decisions. They need supplies, _raincoats,_ and scampering away like spooked mice certainly didn’t help in gaining any of those things.

Claire was equally as confused when he dragged her from Minnie’s stall, a loaf of lightly burnt bread in hand.

“Why are we leaving?” She’d asked. “I thought we were looking for people.”

They were. They had been.

But Ambergate had giant chickens, and to be frank, that _freaked Five the fuck out,_ and he had no desire to say a moment longer than necessary.

This world, whatever it is, wherever they are, is nothing he has ever experienced before, and God knows what Minnie was going on about with _lost children_ and an _Unknown_. She had been talking in riddles, speaking higgledy-piggledy about things Five doesn’t understand as if they were plain fact, and the last time he met someone like that, he was swept up by an organisation who worked outside of the time and space and made into the perfect killer.

Fool me once…

Claire sniffs loudly, bouncing from one puddle to the next. _“Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. Rain, rain, go away, come again another day!”_

The hope is to find another town, one without confusing women and hens who look ready to pluck their eyes out, and from there begin building up the things they need to see them through the next few weeks. Food is at the top of his priority list, first only to clothes better suited to the dreary downpour currently crying all over them. 

From what Five’s seen so far, they stick out like a pair of sore thumbs in their current getups, and he doesn’t need experience to tell him that being distinguishable in a crowd can be dangerous depending on the people and their opinions of sparkly unicorn tops. Fitting in will be key if they are to get strangers warming up to them and their plight.

 _“It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring!”_ Claire sings. _“He went to bed and bumped his head and couldn’t get up in the morning!”_

Their search to find civilisation has so far been totally unsuccessful.

There’s been no signs, no other travellers along the road, and with each cresting of a hill all they have been able to see is an endless ocean of trees and the low-hanging clouds, nothing to point them towards people and the things they can offer. Loathe as he is to admit it, somewhere deep in his gut Five has this terrible sinking feeling that perhaps running from Ambergate cost him more than just a reputation of nicking blackboards.

Said blackboard is currently tucked under his sweater, along with the chalk, in an attempt to keep it and his overnight calculations dry. 

He has likely failed at that, as well.

The ring of Dad’s old mantra, _“I told you so,”_ gloats in the corner of his mind.

“Uncle Five, I’m bored.” Claire sighs, her tone too close to whining to be safely ignored.

Five briefly closes his eyes against the nudging of a headache settling in the depths of his head, though whether it stems from the cold, exhaustion, or stress, he has no idea.

“Bored, bored, bored, bored.” His niece hums, splashing her once purple sneakers in mudwater. Over the last few days, they have turned a murky, sodden brown, ruined beyond any kind of saving. “Bored, bored, bored, _bored-_ ”

“Claire.” Five says, trying very hard not to snap. “Please.”

“Hm? Please what?”

 _She’s your niece, and you love her,_ Dolores unhelpfully reminds him, sounding far too amused.

Clearing his throat, he redirects. “Have you ever been on a long road trip before?”

“Uh-huh. When Mom still lived with us, we went camping and we had to drive _ages_ to get there.” Claire’s face scrunches. “ _And_ I had to sit in the back. Normally Mom and Dad let me sit in the front when it’s only two of us in the car.”

“Right, well, didn’t you do something there to keep you from getting bored?”

She nods. “Yeah, Mom strapped a DVD player to the back of her seat, and I watched _Finding Nemo_ and _UP_ and half of _Barbie and the Nutcracker,_ which is a really old movie, but I liked it anyway.”

Damn Allison and her spoiling.

Breathing out through his nose, Five pinches between his eyes. “Okay. Great. Fantastic. Why don’t you do something with that?”

“But we don’t have a DVD player. Or a car. Or-”

“Can’t you, I don’t know, play pretend?”

The expression Claire pulls is almost the mirror image of Allison’s when she walked into the living room a number of weeks ago just as Diego and Klaus attempted a strange acrobatic trick they’d seen on TV. Diego, because he betted that he could lift Klaus, to quote, _“Like a bunch of grapes,”_ (It was of no surprise to anyone involved that he couldn’t), and Klaus because he is always up for most things, especially if it’s somebody else’s idea.

“Are you just going to sit there?” His sister had asked him, exasperated and apparently not a fan of following Five’s example of watching the chaos unfurl from a safe distance. “Seriously?”

“They learn by experience.” He’d shrugged, sipping whatever glass of putrid something he had poured himself that day. “And if they don’t, they die. Mother nature at her best.”

Allison shook her head at him, and then swiped his drink, helping herself to a large swig. “Unbelievable.”

Claire groans, a discouraging little thing.

“But you’re _boring_ to play pretend with, Uncle Five.” She tells him, straight to his face. “You don’t join in or play along. Uncle Klaus is so much better at it, and at least Uncle Luther _tries_ to play tea parties with me, last time you just sat there holding the cup!”

“Isn’t that the point of tea parties? There’s not much else you can do with a cup, Claire.”

With a huff of frustration, Claire abruptly gives up, marching off down the road as Five trails behind, shaking his head and glancing to the heavens.

According to Klaus, God doesn’t lend out hands of divine intervention.

Not that Klaus needed to tell Five that. He grew up in the apocalypse.

For the next half an hour, his niece refuses to talk to him, adamantly staying ahead of Five and only ever peering back to check that he’s still there. Each time she does, he raises a quizzical eyebrow at her, earning a grumble foreboding the teenager Claire has yet to become and an equally as dramatic head snap back in the direction they walk, often completed with fisted hands.

Only when the trees begin to thin does she allow for Five to catch up, and when she spies a nearby hill, she stops completely.

“What’s that?”

Following her gaze, Five pauses, studying the structure set above the surrounding trees, a splash of limewash white and eggshell blue among the ambers, browns, and greys. The sails are long, with a basic but appealing latticework design, and neat little windows peer out over the rolling landscape.

“It’s a windmill.” He tells her.

“What’s a windmill?”

“One of those.”

Claire pulls a face, the same one she does when Klaus tells one of his godawful puns.

Chuckling, Five relents. “Have you ever seen a wind turbine before? Perhaps on the coast?”

“We learnt about them in school. They make electricity.”

“Well, it’s like that, only it’s made from wood and it’s inland.”

“Does it also make electricity?” Claire’s eyes light up. “Does it have TV? Or a phone? Both?”

“No. It grinds cereals to make bread.”

“Like my Cheerios?”

“Not those kinds of cereals, Claire. Wheat and barley.”

“Oh.”

He bumps his elbow against her, starting forward. “Come on, let’s check it out.”

Claire frowns, skipping to catch up. “Why?”

“Because it’s raining, and I’m soaked.”

After ten minutes it becomes clear that the windmill is a lot further than it originally seemed, but with no other direction to follow, they stick at it, finding a winding track which splits off the main road like a river’s tributary, heading up the steep slope of the hill.

The first thing Five notices is that it’s rockier than the other paths, which ends up being an unexpected but not unappreciated bonus considering that otherwise the trial would be nothing but slick, sleek mud, the kind which enjoys planting unsuspecting victims face first into the soggy wet. The second is that rolling bushes line either side, overcrowding and bustling against one another like people jostling in a queue, each vying for the light provided in the narrow gap between the trees. Their bramble spines reach out towards them, snagging on Five’s sleeves as he carefully navigates his way along behind Claire, threatening to tear and unravel the material less he takes the time to stop and untangle their pointed ends from the only sweater he has at hand.

Claire is wholly unbothered, too small for their tumbling vines as she trudges up the middle of the track. Each time Five gets caught, she rolls her eyes and makes impatient comments, the perfect picture of his sister in her youth.

Eventually, they make it to the top, stepping out into a clearing. 

Now they are closer, the finer details of the windmill are much easier to see. There are patches on the structure where the white paint has faded, and others where it has been recoated with fresh layers, giving it an almost dappled, spotty effect. The sails are long and wide, reaching low to the ground and only missing with calculated precision, and the door has been propped open on a latch, letting in the chilly air.

Three wagons are parked beneath the irregular shelter of the trees, though the horses which pulled them are nowhere to be seen, and to the right sits a duckpond which, logically, should be overflowing from the vast amount of rain seen the last few days, yet remains strangely shallow. As Five stares at it, a frog pokes its head out of the water, blinking one eye, and then the other at him.

Five swallows.

“This is cool.” Claire declares with a funny kind of decisiveness, wonderfully underestimating what should be considered ‘cool’. 

Growing up, Diego was adamant that those cheesy survival shows where the presenter rolls around in the dirt eating bugs were the best thing in the world, and for a time Allison was obsessed with a teen pop group filled with floppy hairstyles and multiple wristbands.

If nothing else, Five is grateful that his little trip to the apocalypse left him without any bewildering and embarrassing obsessions that only grow worse with hindsight.

He doesn’t notice Claire has scampered from his side until she shrieks, stood in the path of one of the sails with her arms outreached to catch it, “I’m gonna ride the windmill!”

 _Five!_ Dolores yelps.

“Claire, no!”

The blackboard clatters out from beneath his sweater as he surges forward, tumbling to the ground with a soggy thump. His hands fist, the very bones of his fingers straining for the familiar thrumming of energy, but his call goes unanswered, and Five has no choice but to sprint across the sodden grass, desperately trying not to slip.

He’s too slow, and the sail happily scoops up his vulnerable, breakable, very soft and squishy niece, taking her _up, up, up_ like a toy in an arcade claw machine. By the time he skids to a staggering halt, a terrible clench of panic seizing his chest and nearly sliding arse-over-head in his hurry, her shoes dangle at chest height, and he snatches onto her ankles with both hands, holding tightly.

“Let go! Let go _right now!”_

She listens to him, thank fuck, making a soft, “Oomph!” sound as she falls heavily into his waiting arms and then gets half deposited, half dropped onto her feet, ruffled but otherwise unscathed.

Sucking in a breath, his jaw like a vice, Five steps back and takes a moment press his fist against his chest, battling down what he can of his lashing temper which is currently bubbling barking words up his throat. It scorches like lava, a liquid pool searing away at the back of his tongue, his mind racing with a thousand different _what ifs_ on how that could have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

 _Inhale, and exhale_ Dolores instructs, and Five carefully follows her words until his heart doesn’t clammer quite as loudly in his ears. 

His siblings may be able to take it, they know him, they grew up with him, they understand that for all he spits blazing fire and hisses dark truths, he loves them unconditionally, but Claire is a child, a kid who only met him not long ago, unleashing such heated emotions onto her now would have the very opposite effect.

He opens his eyes.

“Claire.” He starts slowly, forcing every ounce of control into his tone. “ _Never_ do that again.”

“I would’ve been fine.” She pouts.

Five leans down so they are the same height, not breaking his stern gaze. “No, you would’ve fallen, and you would’ve gotten hurt.”

“But-”

“This isn’t a toy, Claire, or a playground ride. Do you see that?” Taking her shoulder, Five makes sure she watches how the edge of the sail she had been clinging to ends up dead vertical as it crests the highest point of its circular arc. “You’d be upside down. Once you’re up there, it’s impossible to keep your grip. It’s too disorienting.”

“But…Couldn’t you have caught me? With your powers?”

“They don’t work right now, remember?”

“Oh.” Claire says quietly, her head ducking down to her chest, and her fingers absently fiddling with her gifted bracelet. “Yeah.”

Sighing as he straightens up, running a hand down his face, Five feels his shoulders sag, a strange tiredness weighing down his bones. “Just…Promise you won’t do that again, and you’ll tell me if you want to do something, so I can make sure it’s safe.”

There are no hospitals out here, not going by what they have seen so far, and the chances of finding practicing doctors ready to help are as likely as flash floods during a drought. If one of them gets hurt, they will have nothing to rely on but themselves.

For all Five is self-reliant and self-taught in the art of field-oriented first aid, even he can’t fix a broken neck.

After a second of hesitation, Claire inches forward and wraps her arms tight around his waist, pressing against him in a hug. Her hood has fallen down, and her hair is damp with rain as she hides her face in his chest.

“Claire-”

“I’m sorry. I won’t, I promise Uncle Five. Oh, no, wait, I mean, _I will,_ uh-”

He scoffs, patting her back and resting his chin on her head. “It’s okay, I know what you mean. Thank you. Now, why don’t we head inside? It’s cold out here.”

Sniffling suspiciously but working hard to hide it, Claire pulls away and takes his hand in hers, silently leading them over to the latched door. She strains up onto her toes to reach the latch, knocking it from its catch and sidestepping out the way as the creaky hinges swings the door open.

“There’s probably people here.” Five says as she tugs him inside. “So remember to-”

He snaps his mouth shut.

Claire freezes, her fingers instinctively squeezing hard against his.

 _Oh,_ Says Dolores, _You have got to be kidding me._

A room full of human-sized geese stare back at them.

Five wants to fucking _cry._

Just like the hens, these geese, six of them in total, are far too large to be anything natural, standing several hands tall with necks that seem to go on for miles, bending slightly to avoid colliding their heads with the wooden ceiling. Most wear workman’s waistcoats, their pockets bulging with tools and knickknacks and nails, and a few also sport flat caps, the hats dyed various shades of grey bar one which flaunts an affluent purple.

“Uncle Five…”

His attention snaps towards Claire, who inches backwards to the point of almost standing on his shoes. Her eyes remain fixed on the geese, the birds regarding his niece with tilted, curious heads.

“Uncle Five-”

 _“Shit.”_ Five breathes. “Claire, listen, this is fine, just-”

“This,” Claire interrupts, “Is so _cool!”_

One of the geese ruffles its feathers.

Five blanks. “What?”

Just like that, he suddenly has a bouncing, squealing, giggling seven-year-old on his hands. “Do you think I can pet one? Can I pet one, Uncle Five? Please? I’ll be really careful! Do you think Mom will let us take a giant swan home? I’ll be really good and take care of it!”

To quote Number Four, _Christ on a cracker._

“They’re geese.” Is the first thing Five’s brain helpfully decides to blurt.

“Oh, okay, can I have a giant geese then?”

“ _Goose,_ Claire, giant _goose._ ” Holding out his hands to try and tame her excited jumping before she riles one of the birds into annoyance, Five gulps away his dry mouth. “And I don’t think so.”

Her face falls. “What? Why?”

“I don’t think they’d like it.”

Carefully, he peers around at the birds, finding all of them staring back. Some glance at one another, as if exchanging opinions on the situation. 

An uneasy curl flicks in the pit of Five’s stomach.

“But I’m sure Mom would buy them a pond if we asked nicely.” Claire continues, blissfully ignorant of the tenseness in her Uncle’s shoulders. “Or a lake! And I can feed them the bread from my sandwiches! Dad always packs me sandwiches for lunch.”

Then, in an act of mercy (small or great, Five doesn't know, he has no reference for goose-related murders), the geese seem to collectively decide that they pose no threat, and, with the bird-equivalent of a shrug, return to whatever tasks they had been doing before the interruption.

 _Okay,_ Dolores whispers in his ear, her voice soothing honey, _That seems to be that. Breathe, Five._

He does, tuning out the shakiness of it.

The sound of hammers banging against wood is enough to break Claire out of her insistent begging, her brown eyes peering around at the sudden bustling activity. 

“What’re they doing?”

“Working. I guess.”

Five needs a drink, or eight.

“Oh. That’s less fun.”

Two of the geese linger to one side of the room, inspecting crates filled with neatly packed paper bags containing what Five assumes to be freshly ground flour, a cartoon image of a goose in a baking hat smiling widely on the front. One of them has a clipboard tucked under its wing, and the other appears to be counting.

Two others have picked up various DIY tools and have settled into a routine of going absolutely nuts with completely meaningless tasks. They force nails into the timber walls, twist screws into random joints, sandpaper chunks of wood for no good reason, and paint areas of the ceiling far too thickly, leaving giant gaps between each stroke of the brush.

It’s like watching interns pretend to look busy.

The final two are the only geese who appear to be actually achieving anything. The first, the bird wearing the purple cap, waddles over to a great pile of material sacks, grabbing one in its beak and dragging it across to the stairs, where the final goose, which has a grey cap perched on its head, takes it, and heaves it up through the square-cut hatch onto the next floor.

It is only then that Five realises are even more sounds of feet overhead.

 _There’s so many,_ Dolores murmurs.

Clearing his throat, he redirects his attention. “Right. Claire, come on, let’s-”

“Hang on!” Batting his hand away as he goes for her arm, Claire, without an inch of warning, takes off across the room, all but charging straight towards the geese.

Five startles, and then hurries after her, hissing, _“Claire!”_

She’s not listening. 

Over on the stairs, one of the sacks has become snagged on a jagged splinter, leaving the goose struggling to haul it upwards. With an agitated grumble, its large wings unfurl and begin flapping uselessly, thumping into the ceiling and sending a steady stream of dust and primary feathers tumbling onto its purple capped counterpart, who honks in annoyance before sneezing.

None of which deters his youngest family member.

“Claire!” Five snaps, hyper aware of the other birds facing them curiously. “Get back here _right now!”_

“I can help!” Claire insists, her promise from outside purged from her mind as she squeezes by the first goose and clambers up the steps, unlatching the caught bag with the ease of someone with opposable thumbs. “There, see?”

Above her, the newly freed goose makes some kind of squawking noise as it suddenly staggers backwards through the hatch, tripping on the final step and falling ass-over-head, feet stuck wiggling in the air and head hitting the floor.

Claire giggles, and the purple capped goose quietens, regarding her.

Five freezes, holding his breath.

On instinct, his nails dig into the palm of his hands, carving out reddened half-moons as his fingers demand the buzz of blue that could see him across the room and snatching up his niece in only a heartbeat.

Yet nothing happens, no bright flash, no spark of whirling power, and Five is left stranded, standing there only able to watch as the goose turns its head slowly from Claire to him, scanning him up and down like an irritating weed.

There is a strange kind of intelligence behind its gaze, oddly sharp and bizarre in its intensity, and Five fights to keep his face indecipherable as he returns it, not daring to move in fear of instigating something he shouldn’t. He keeps his head up, an act of silence defiance, a promise that if this bird (it’s a bird, it’s just a _fucking bird)_ decides to even think about placing one feather on Claire with the intent to harm, then windmill full of geese or not, powers or no, he will make it suffer.

Five might not have a single clue what is going on in this maybe-world, but Claire is family, and he will fight hell and high water to protect her.

He owes Allison that much.

Claire, oblivious, noisily stomps up the steps and peeks through the hatch at the fallen goose. “Are you okay?”

There’s a dazed-sounding honk.

The goose beside him moves.

“We don’t want any trouble.” Five declares instantly, taking a large step back and keeping half an eye on Claire. The goose walks by him. “We can leave now.”

There’s a little part of Five’s brain, all the way at the back and buried under the panic and the need to get Claire home, that is watching this in utter denial. 

He’s negotiating with a goddamn _goose._

But then again, what in Five’s life is allowed to follow even a shred of sanity, anyway?

He had a chimp butler as a kid.

The goose says nothing, unsurprisingly, taking the corner of the next sack in its beak and dragging it towards the stairs.

“Claire, come on.” Five calls up at her, because they are being ignored and he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Deaf to his strained tone, her head is still vanished through the hatch, Claire pays him no heed, babbling to the geese up there as if this is a trip a theme park where underpaid employees are forced to dress as company mascots rather than a real, disorientating, mind-boggling mess.

“We went to one of Mom’s friend’s houses last year and they had a whole elevator _inside_ their home!” She explains, barely pausing for air. “It was so cool! They didn’t have to use the stairs or anything! So you could totally put one in here, I’m sure it’d fit!”

“Claire! We need to-” A sudden weight gets shoved into his arms, and Five staggers, fumbling with the sack the purple capped goose has all but thrown at him. Chilled fingers messily grab hold of the material, and after a second of confused blinking, Five looks up, scowling. “What?”

The goose honks at him expectantly.

Dolores snickers, _You’ve made a friend._

He mentally sends her the middle finger, making her chuckle harder.

“Look,” He starts, moving to dump the bag against the wall, “I don’t-”

Honk.

Five grits his teeth, trying again. “We’ve got places to be, we’re not-”

Honk.

“For fuck’s sake-”

_Honk!_

Flinching back from the beak that snaps an inch from his face, Five gulps, wide-eyed, glancing around the room. All activity has stopped, paused like someone messing with the controls of a TV, every head turned towards him in what must be the most threatening farmyard scene since the pig dictatorship of _Animal Farm_.

Dad liked them to read the classics.

“All animals are equal,” Five remembers reading out to Vanya, tucked away in her little nook of a room as they poured over laborious homework, “But some animals are more equal than others. Ha! Isn’t that a riot?”

Subtlety was not a trait of their Father.

Five blinks.

The goose stares back.

 _This is productive,_ Dolores comments.

“Oh, are we gonna help?” Claire chimes from the stairs, leaning down. Her hands reach out to take the bag from him. “Pass it up, Uncle Five!”

The purple capped goose narrows its eyes.

Dolores questions softly, _Five?_

They are outnumbered.

He hates it, he hates it straight through to his very being, but that is the truth of the matter.

While Five might be a skilled hand at killing, damn good, if he does say so himself, there is only so much he can do powerless against a multiple enemy attack, especially with Claire in tow. If they were home, if this was normal, Five wouldn’t think much of keeping a few geese at bay, would barely blink an eye.

But this world doesn’t work.

Giant animals exist. They possess the intelligence to work human jobs. The people here are more akin to low-paid extras in a poorly researched historical film, some of them ready and willing to kill children unprovoked, and the likelihood of this coming to any kind of sane conclusion dims with each passing day.

Five is in over his head.

A few of the geese begin to warble, a strange, tuneless noise that gets the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, a shiver of anticipation shooting down his spine. Feathers begin to ruffle, and on the floor above him footsteps start shuffling towards the hatch, inching ever closer to Claire.

Hands still waiting for the bag, Claire tuts impatiently, “C’mon, Uncle Five!”

 _What do you plan to do?_ Dolores asks quietly. 

Survive.

With a sniff from the cold and ducking his head like a submissive fucking mutt, Five drags the sack over to Claire who then lugs it up through the hatch to the goose on the floor above.

At this point, that is all he can do.

The purple capped goose brings him another sack, and Five dutifully passes it up, offering no comment.

Dolores makes a strange little noise, her voice filtering through soft, confused, _This isn’t like you, Five._

The wetness of his clothes has sunk through to his skin, sending chills scattering up his arms. His hair, stuck down from the rain, flops across his eyes, and as the goose wanders over with another bag to pass up, he swipes his hand across his face, sniffing again.

 _Okay,_ Dolores says, and that’s why he loves her, _Okay, why don’t we have a think, Five? It’s dry and Claire’s occupied, so let’s have a think._

The math last night was fruitless. Despite his best efforts, none of the calculations, from time paradoxes to the simple formulas he’s used since infancy to jump from one place to the next, could explain how they sidestepped out of their own world into this. Dimensional travel shouldn’t even be part of his repertoire, considering what he saw at The Commission and the way they were very keen on keeping things on one singular, narrow path, because no sideways place like this would be allowed to exist.

The whole purpose of their company was to exist outside time and space, why would they let such a nonsense pocket dimension continue bumbling on? What here could possible help them achieve their raison d’êter, the goddamn chickens? The geese? An inn with a list of rules so needlessly complicated that anyone would be lucky to book a room for the night?

A goose honks. Hammers bang against wood. Something upstairs is dropped, clattering loudly.

The Handler had prattled on about machines at headquarters, could this be another cog? Perhaps there was something of use here, something that the normal timeline didn’t have or support, which made the existence of this place worth it. The Commission is filled to the brim with gadgets beyond regular human understanding, could the origins of one be here?

“I don’t know any songs about geese. Oh! Do you know this one?” Claire clears her throat and starts singing, _“Five little ducks went swimming one day, over the hills and far away! Mother duck said quack, quack, quack, quack, but only four little ducks came back!”_

Should he be on the lookout for Commission agents?

Should he be on the lookout for their _briefcase?_

With Claire’s constant stream of noise gushing away in the background and the monotonous task of lugging bags around occupying his hands, Five’s mind tumbles into a mess of whirlpooling questions, tossing them around feverishly as he desperately searches back through his memories for any hint The Handler ever gave of her company allowing for this kind of blip in the radar.

For all that she was a formidable woman, by heck she was, she was also, in so many ways, a mirror of Five himself.

 _That’s distressing,_ Dolores grimaces.

Maybe, but it’s also true. Prideful of their achievements, self-assured of their place in the world, a steadfast confidence at their own abilities, they were truly two sides of the same coin, a reflection in hazy water. Killing came easy, strategy was second nature, and the verbal spars whenever Five came by to pick up his next report were both deliciously enjoyed and filled with seething fire.

 _But?_ Dolores prompts.

Pride comes before a fall, a lesson Five was forced to learn in the hardest of ways, yet The Handler never did, and for all they stared into that hazy water and saw the other staring there, there was always, _always,_ no matter how bloody he became and how gristly the slaughter, one thing that set them apart.

Five loves his family. The Handler never loved anyone apart from herself.

For him, there were always stakes in their monologuing battles, ones which went beyond his wreck of an existence. The thought of his siblings kept him in check, made him hold back the words he would otherwise like to hiss in her smug face, in turn hiding away the things he didn’t want revealed.

With nothing at risk and her ego at full bloat, The Handler had no such thing.

“I am but a small cog in a machine.” She had told him one moment, as he held a gun to her face.

“One faulty cog and nothing works as it should.” She told him the next, confirming that The Commission is nothing but a jenga tower ready to be toppled with the right spanner in the works.

Self-absorption breeds mistakes. Five’s made enough of them in his lifetime to know.

“Uncle Five, what’re these?”

“Hm?” Flooding back into reality, Five stares up at Claire, who has paused with a sack on the stairs beside her, the material torn open. “What?”

“These.” Sat on her palm are two shiny, reddish-brown ovals, a little like stones, each with a paler scar circle in the middle. “The bags are full of them.”

“It’s a conker.” He says, taking the moment’s rest to shake out his worn arms as he does. While he may be used to gritting his teeth and getting on with things, usually they involve a lot more intellectual work and far less physical. Five hasn’t been forced to do this much since his days training with Dad.

“What’s a conker?”

“Trees make them. It’s like an acorn.”

Claire’s nose scrunches, and she peers into the sack. “Why are we moving these? Can you eat them?”

“At a guess, I’d say that’s what the geese are making the flour from.”

“But I thought you said that what wheat and stuff?”

“It usually is, Claire, I’m not a flour expert. Just…” He motions with his hands. “Come on, the quicker we’re done here, the sooner we can leave.”

Probably.

If not, there will be issues.

Soon enough, the pile of sacks begins to dwindle, going from a triple-layered pile to a double, and then a single. 

Claire talks the entire time, to him, to the goose she’s handing the bags to, and the room at large. She doesn’t complain once, much to his surprise, distracted by the novelty and preoccupied with informing each bird she sees with the ins and outs of her glamourous daughter-of-a-celebrity lifestyle. 

Everything is covered, from magazine photoshoots to paparazzi, the stories littered with small observational details which show just how sharp Claire will be once she hits higher education.

It is strange, but his niece seems happy with the work, and the constant movement has helped dry off the uncomfortable damp edge to their clothes, warming their limbs. When their hands briefly touch, Five notes that her fingers no longer feel frozen.

Finally, they finish, the last sack vanishing off through the hatch. Ever curious, Claire follows it, disappearing from sight as Five hurriedly calls up after her, “Don’t touch anything!”

“I won’t!” Her muffled voice promises.

Dolores, her voice light, pipes up, _And how certain are we that she’ll listen?_

“Never, with her.”

The sound of waddling catches his attention, and Five squints up at the approaching purple capped goose, who studies Five with unreadable eyes, towering high with that impressively long neck. Five straightens his back, watching as the bird tilts its head from one side to the other, regarding him with less intensity than before.

“Uh,” Five croaks awkwardly, before he can quite catch himself.

With a huff of air, the goose pads to the side, revealing two others shuffling up behind, wedges of material clasped in their beaks. They stroll right up to Five, making him step backwards without thinking, only to then dump the fabric into his arms and retreat off into the room, their white tails flicking happily.

“What? What are…” Coarse and wiry, the material scratches Five’s hands as he holds it out, sharp eyes glancing over what he’s just been given, only to then widen in surprise, his mouth forming a soft, “Oh.”

Cloaks.

Two of them.

They’re poorly made, with badly stitched hems and bits of sting to tie them together, but they are cloaks nonetheless, a much-needed extra layer of protection against the weeping downpour outside.

Five turns to the goose hovering at his side, weirdly taken aback. Their gazes meet for a split second, only for the goose to them turn away, glaring pointedly at the nearest wall.

“Thank you.” He says, meaning it. “This is a very kind gift.” 

Purple capped goose ruffles its feathers and grumbles, and it may just be Five’s imagination, but it almost appears embarrassed.

Holding the cloaks close to his chest, Five licks his lips. “We’re, uh, we’re going to head off, now. We have a lot of ground to cover. We were following the road north before stopping here, and I really need to get Claire to a town before nightfall.”

“There’s not much in that direction.” Claire’s voice informs him from above, and Five glances up to find her walking back down the stairs, her muddy sneakers loud on the steps.

Confused, Five raises an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

“I asked Terry.” She shrugs, tugging at one of the cloaks. “What’re these?”

“Who’s Terry?”  


A dark shadow falls over the hatch, and the face of a giant, fluffy red squirrel bounces into view, whiskers twitching, ears twisting this way and that, small hands rubbing together as if some great scheme has fallen into place. It snaps its teeth, the noise clattering like chisel on marble, before bustling through the square-cut hole with a scary amount of coordination for something that just threw itself down the stairs headfirst.

Alarm jolts through his chest, and as quick as a whip Five grabs hold of Claire, dragging her behind him, much to her vocal displeasure. However, as the squirrel comes to a stop and not a single other being, niece or goose alike, flinches at the very real human-sized mammal that has just appeared out of nowhere like they're on one of Klaus’ bad trips, he finds himself falling still, regarding it with weary, guarded eyes.

 _Oh,_ Is all Dolores is able to say on the matter.

Claire grins, waving a hand towards the beast. “Uncle Five, this is Terry.”

“Hi.” The squirrel says.

“What.” Five says.

“Yeah, there’s not much north.” Terry, the squirrel, the talking squirrel, continues, his words rushed and fidgety. “Not in that direction, no, no, no. Lots of trees. You looking for trees? There’s lots of trees that way.”

Claire nods. “Uh-huh, I asked Terry and he says the forest goes on for miles!”

“Oh, that it does, that it does!” Terry agrees, his tail flicking from one side to the other. “Not many people though, if you’re looking for people. I think there’s an inn if you go south? But you don’t want to go there, oh no, very nasty dog.”

“Brutal.” One of the geese laments, sending Five darting sideways with what can only be described as a squeak. He clutches Claire to his chest like a lifeline.

“Terrible.” A second goose adds.

“A bad boy, that one.” The purple capped goose shakes its head sadly. “Very bad.”

“You can _talk?”_ Five gawks.

Terry points off eastwards, all the while lifting a back leg to furiously scratch at his shoulder. “There’s a big lake, that way, very big lake. There’s people there.”

“Oh yes, there is.” Goose one agrees.

“Ah, lovely folk.” Goose two sighs.

“Good swimming.” Purple capped goose says, wistfully.

He might be laughing, he might be crying, Five doesn’t have a fucking clue, he just buries his face into Claire’s hair with a shaky, high-pitched whisper of, “I hate this. I hate this so much. _What the shit?”_

“But it takes many days to get there.” Terry continues, running his paws over the tufts on his ears. “Many days, yes siree!”

Wiggling out of his grip, Claire spins around, almost shoving something up his nose. “And look what Terry gave me!”

“Huh?” Five blanks at the conker currently making his eyes go crossed, mutely gaping at the shakily drawn smiley face on the sandy coloured circular scar. “O-Oh, that’s nice.”

Claire beams, showing her gapped-tooth smile. “Uh-huh!”

 _Did she say thank you?_ Dolores prods him.

“Did you say thank you?” He echoes weakly.

“I did.”

“Aw, shucks.” Terry the magical talking squirrel blushes, his tail bristling happily. “‘Twas no bother, not at all, nope, nope, nope! That conkers no good for our flour, it’d only be wasted! And we all liked Claire’s stories, oh _yes_ we did!”

“Right.” Five says. “Well.” Five says. “It’s time for us to go.”

Claire’s face instantly crumples. “But Uncle Five-”

“ _Nope,_ we’re leaving, _right now._ We have a lot of ground to cover.” He shoves a cloak at her. “Put this on.”

“But-”

_“Claire.”_

Huffing loudly out her nose, Claire pockets her conker and snatches the cloak from him, flinging it around her shoulders with foreboding teenage strop. He follows suit, tugging the hood over his head. It’s too big, threatening to cover his eyes completely, but that’s the least of his worries at the moment.

Terry scratches his shoulder again. “Head east, that’s your best bet.”

“We will, thank you.” Grabbing Claire’s hand in a grip she can’t argue with, Five marches them across the room, ignoring the muttering below her breath. “Come on, time for us to leave.”

“Fine.” She snips, throwing over her shoulder, “Bye Terry! Bye geese!”

“Bye Claire!”

“Bye Claire!”

“Bye Claire!”

“Have a nice swim at the lake!”

The latch on the door rattles as Five all but flings it open, his shoes sinking wetly into the grass as the cold rushes to greet him.

“Bye Uncle Five!” One of the geese calls at his back. “And stop swearing around your niece!”

That catches Claire’s amusement, and she giggles at the scold, snickering as he steers them through the turning sails, passed the still miraculously shallow duckpond, and over towards the trail they had followed earlier, the ground squelching beneath their feet. 

Rain pelts down from the deep grey overhead, tapping noisily against their cloaks and hoods, and surface water once again takes up its joyful habit of leaking into his footwear, happily soaking his socks and quickly numbing his chilled toes. Claire pulls out of his hold to skip about in front of him, swiftly discovering that her cloak spreads out behind her like a superhero cape as she turns. She spins on her heel, laughing at it.

Something hard crunches beneath his foot.

Five jumps, glancing down.

“Oh.”

Slowly lifting his shoe, his face tugs into a grimace at the sight of the chalk. Having spent who knows how long being softened by the rain, it is now no more than a gloopy pile of mush crushed out of usefulness, a washed-out stain against the sea of green and brown.

Underneath, cracked into a jagged spiderweb, is his stolen blackboard.

Five plucks one of the fragments between his fingers, staring dejectedly at the faint tracings of his writing steadily sliding away in streaking white tears.

“Shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Fred the Horse can suddenly start talking, then so can my geese, and that’s that on that!
> 
> Sorry this chapter took so long to get out. I gave myself a break over Christmas and New Year, but then in January covid came to tea and couldn’t tell when it had overstayed its welcome. Thankfully, I’ve since managed to boot it out the house, so I’m getting back into business as normal!
> 
> [Tumblr](https://ancientstone.tumblr.com/)


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